Archive for category: Labor

The Industrial Workers of the World pioneered a radical unionism that built a small but incredibly dedicated group of unionists and union supporters — which is why American capitalists and politicians quickly decided they needed to stop the union.

International Workers of the World labor organizer Frank Tannenbaum, speaking to a gathering at Union Square in New York City, March 21, 1914. (Bettmann / Getty Images)

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and its radical unionism was exploding in power and members. Yet less than ten years later, the IWW was all but smashed after a brutal campaign of repression and vigilantism. How did such a vibrant force of working-class power end up all but destroyed in the course of a decade?

In his new book, Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers, labor and legal scholar Ahmed White documents the legal and extralegal repression the union faced, along with the incredibly dedicated radical unionism such repression was designed to stamp out. He spoke to labor historian Peter Cole about his new book and what the history of Wobbly repression has to teach unionists today.

Peter Cole

First, tell us about the IWW and why this union was both so important and so distinct from other unions in the early twentieth century.

Ahmed White

The IWW distinguished itself in several ways. It was not only an avowedly industrial union at a time when the mainstream labor movement’s primary focus was craft-based organizing, it was also the most radical union of its day and probably in the history of this country. Besides this, its perspective and strategy were uniquely syndicalist, as it believed its radical visions would be achieved by workers themselves, organized not around the conventional, modern state and a system of legal rights but their own indigenous institutions.

At the same time, the union also viewed the state in its current manifestation with unqualified contempt, as a bound servant of capitalist interests. Obviously, the IWW did not realize its revolutionary vision, and almost certainly it never had more than 200,000 members at any given time. But through the late 1910s and early 1920s, perhaps several times this number passed through its ranks, and hundreds of thousands of workers who never took out membership in the union were enthralled with its rhetoric and embraced its program.

All of this made it an exceptionally dangerous union in the eyes of capitalists and their allies, which is why the union and its members were the target of such extraordinary repression.

Peter Cole

Even though the rival American Federation of Labor (AFL) was much larger in size, arguably the IWW was the most notable union of the World War I era. Yet it seemed to “disappear” almost as quickly as it arose.

Historians, Wobblies, and others have long debated its demise. You argue that repression — by the federal government, many state governments, and employers — was the preeminent reason that its membership, power, and influence collapsed by the mid-1920s. Why do you make this claim?

Ahmed White

Certainly many factors contributed to the union’s demise, including organizational deficiencies, changes in work that undermined the efficacy of its organizing methods, and the rise of communism as a rival socialist tradition, to name a few. But yes, I argue that repression was key, and I do so because I think the record is so clear on this point.

There’s been a lot of excellent work on the Wobblies over the years, including on the question of repression. Indeed, it is impossible to write anything about the IWW without talking about repression on some level. But for whatever reasons, the tendency has been to discuss the different types of repression the union faced in relative isolation from each other without looking at the ways these all worked with each other to make the union’s survival untenable.

There has also been a tendency not to reckon adequately with repression’s devastating effects on individual people, to focus maybe too much on how it damaged the institution instead of how it destroyed the lives of the people in the union. When you look at repression in these ways, it becomes very difficult to see how the union endured as long as it did and impossible to deny that it was a decisive factor in its demise.

Peter Cole

The title of your book is taken from the title of a novel by Jack London. Tell us about London, that novel, and why you found it so compelling that you used the same title.

Ahmed White

London was not only one of the most successful writers of his day — he was also a socialist.

His writings were devoured by leftists of all stripes, but especially the Wobblies, who, as we know, put a great premium on literacy. The Iron Heel, written only a few years after the IWW was founded, was immensely popular among the union’s ranks. Not only did it serve as a kind of introduction to socialist theory, but its dramatic account of the merciless crushing of a workers’ uprising, led by the state and abetted by reformists in society, seemed to prophesy the Wobblies’ own experience with repression — to the point that Wobblies, who eulogized London as “an IWW man,” often spoke of themselves as being “under” or “beneath” the “Iron Heel.”

The Iron Heel was not the only work by London that spoke to the Wobblies in this way, but it was his most important. Likewise, while London was not the only writer to influence the Wobblies, his influence in their ranks was unsurpassed.

The police driving the International Workers of the World off of the sidewalk at Union Square in New York City, April 14, 1914. (Bettmann / Getty Images)

Peter Cole

You don’t just focus on governmental repression. You also devote a lot of attention to vigilantism. Tell us why that matters.

Ahmed White

Initially, this was going to be a book about criminal syndicalism laws, which were state and municipal sedition laws enacted for the express purpose of criminalizing the IWW. But I gradually expanded the project as I recognized, first, that a book about the IWW would be infinitely more interesting than a book about laws, and second, that you really can’t understand any aspect of the union’s experience with repression without trying to understand everything its members had to deal with.

Once I reconceived the book in this broader way, it likewise became obvious that the lines people draw between “legal” and “illegal” or “legal” and “extralegal” are often not very useful, either practically or conceptually. Much of the vigilantism the Wobblies endured was sanctioned by police and government officials, and much of the legal repression they faced was hardly within the four corners of the law anyway — which helps prove the broader point that law and legal process are not alternatives to violence but instead different means of imposing violence.

Peter Cole

You’re a lawyer and teach at a law school. Could you go into greater depth as to how the law was used as a bludgeon against the IWW?

Ahmed White

I mentioned Jack London’s importance to the Wobblies. You might also say that I found a reading of London important, in turn, in understanding how it was that the Wobblies viewed the world. In both respects, whether one is talking about London or the IWW, one thing that really stands out is this understanding that the state was poised to crush any significant threats to the interests and values of powerful capitalists; another is that the law was in many ways a means by which the state was prepared to accomplish this.

So it was that between 1917 and 1921, the federal government, nearly two dozen states, and dozens of municipalities all enacted laws designed to punish the Wobblies for their radicalism and to drive the IWW out of business. At the federal level, the main provisions adopted for these purposes were sections of the infamous Espionage Act, which criminalized interfering with the war effort. At the state and municipal levels, the focus was on criminal syndicalism laws, which made it a crime to advocate or belong to an organization that advocated revolutionary change by sabotage, violence, or other criminal acts.

These all worked in quite similar ways, making membership in the organization a seditious act that could be prosecuted and punished as a conspiracy, which is to say without police or prosecutors ever showing that defendants had actually done much more than belong to the IWW.

The prosecutions were aided in almost every case by the charge that the IWW, which for years celebrated the concept of sabotage in its literature and iconography, was committed to a program of wanton destruction as a means of achieving its revolutionary purposes. While the IWW’s view of sabotage was quite broad and its commitment to the practice mainly involved slowdowns, overly deliberate work, and similar means of “striking on the job,” some Wobblies did engage in what was called “destructive sabotage,” and the union was widely reputed to be committed to such tactics. This made it easier to convict defendants, even though it was almost unheard of for prosecutors to allege that anyone actually on trial was guilty of such conduct — and even though there was never much evidence that the union, which in 1917 repudiated the very concept of sabotage, had sanctioned any such conduct.

In the end, over 150 Wobblies were convicted of violating the Espionage Act; twice this number, at least, were convicted of felony criminal syndicalism charges. The great majority of these defendants were imprisoned. A few were also convicted by similar means of conventional sedition charges. Dozens were convicted of misdemeanor, municipal-level criminal syndicalism charges. And a few members were also wrongly convicted of homicide charges.

But exceeding all other prosecutions, in number, at least, were vagrancy cases. It was not uncommon for wayward workers to be prosecuted for vagrancy in these days — something a young London famously discovered — or for vagrancy charges to be levied against union organizers or strikes.

As London also discovered, there was essentially no defense to the charges. With the Wobblies, these prosecutions reached epic proportions. Countless thousands of union people were charged with vagrancy — probably tens of thousands, in fact, many of them multiple times, and typically when trying to organize or hold out for better wages or working conditions.

The penalties for vagrancy weren’t especially severe, but jail was typical, and the cumulative effect of so many cases was simply overwhelming. In the end, these prosecutions probably did as much to criminalize the IWW and undermine its efforts as the Espionage Act and criminal syndicalism cases.

The Wobblies’ extraordinary resistance was rooted in their remarkable devotion to what their union was trying to accomplish.

Peter Cole

The IWW already engendered tremendous hate and fear among employers and many in the middle and upper classes, resulting in the persecution that you documented. It was no secret that the state served the needs of the employing class. Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands of workers joined the IWW. What explains why so many signed up for a red card and remained unapologetic about being Wobblies?

Ahmed White

This is in many ways the most compelling part of the story. To carry the union’s red card was indeed to give license to police, local toughs, “respectable” citizens, or just about anyone to assault you, take your money, put you in jail and possibly throw you into prison, and in more than a few cases, to kill you. Those who were incarcerated endured unspeakable horrors, and many who were assaulted, either behind bars or on the streets, were grievously injured.

And yet they kept coming, sometimes, if perchance they were acquitted or not charged, demanding that judges and prosecutors convict them so they might join their fellow workers in captivity; and in scores of other cases refusing to leave prison when some kind of clemency was offered them unless their fellow workers were also released.

The courage these Wobblies showed in the face of repression is unsurpassed in this country’s history, which is saying something. And it does beg the question: How did they manage this? Certainly, these were exceptionally tough characters, mostly migratory industrial workers who were used to all manner of hardships. But more than this, the Wobblies’ extraordinary resistance was rooted in their remarkable devotion to what their union was trying to accomplish.

Time and again, Wobblies described the IWW as a “religion.” They likened themselves to the early Christian martyrs. And they clearly believed that it was their destiny, as industrial unionists, to change the world, to overthrow capitalism, and build a genuine workers’ commonwealth from which the exploitation and repression they suffered would be forever banished.

The Wobblies’ remarkable devotion to this vision didn’t make them invulnerable, of course; the union was eventually broken, along with many of those who were beaten or jailed. But in their devotion and in the courage they drew from this, these people showed us what proper radicals really are.

Peter Cole

Most of your book covers the 1910s and 1920s. How do you think the history of a revolutionary union that suffered brutal persecution connects to the United States and the world a century later?

Ahmed White

Much has changed in the hundred years since this story unfolded, but I do think that a great deal of what the Wobblies did and what happened to them remain relevant today. In a lot of ways, it’s only recently that the labor movement has widely and properly embraced the IWW’s vision of unionism that truly reaches across the divides of race, ethnicity, and gender. It is also conspicuous how many of the most promising campaigns that comprise the current surge in labor organizing are, like the IWW a century ago, independent of the AFL-CIO and its culture of bureaucratized, disenchanting business unionism. And there is the IWW itself, whose rebirth draws explicitly on the culture of socialism, radicalism, and self-reliance that made the union such a force a century ago.

Indeed, it is worth mentioning how long and how well the Wobblies have served, not only the labor movement, but the American left more broadly as models of resolution and courage in the face of tremendous adversity, of fidelity to the principles of working-class solidarity, and of decency and dignity in the face of depredation and inhumanity. This book doesn’t diminish them in any of these respects. Quite the opposite, in fact: I’m confident that workers and organizers of all stripes today can draw inspiration from this book. But that’s not all this story has to offer, I’m afraid.

Like the Wobblies themselves, I also see what happened to them as a warning to leftists and unionists of what the capitalist class and their allies are prepared to do to hold radicalism in check the moment they believe their interests and values are really in jeopardy. The Wobblies understood this from the very outset, in fact. And what happened to them, ironically, went a very long way toward proving that they were right all along.

More than 1,000 members of the Teamsters union and allies turned out Tuesday in downtown Seattle to stand in solidarity with Amazon workers and to denounce the tech titan’s “union-busting tactics and dangerous labor practices.”

In a rally coinciding with this week’s Teamsters Women’s Conference in Seattle, demonstrators gathered outside Amazon’s headquarters in the northwestern city holding signs with messages including “Amazon Hurts Workers,” “Organize Amazon,” and “Stop Union-Busting.”

A tweet by the union explained that its members “are taking action at Amazon HQ, fighting for more workplace protections in the warehouse and logistics industry, and defending workers from the unchecked exploitation of one of the world’s most dangerous employers.”

“It’s time to hold the white-collar crime syndicate known as Amazon accountable,” Teamsters added.

Sean M. O’Brien, general president of the 1.2 million-member International Brotherhood of Teamsters, said at the rally that “Amazon should be afraid — the Teamsters are here standing shoulder-to-shoulder with so many communities demanding change.”

Right Now: General President Sean M. O’Brien is rallying more than 1,200 #Teamsters outside of Amazon’s corporate headquarters in Seattle. Teamsters have a message for Bezos and his white-collar crime syndicate called Amazon: we are 1.2 million-strong, and we are coming for you! pic.twitter.com/wEqp3DimJV

— Teamsters (@Teamsters) September 20, 2022

“The Teamsters aren’t going away. Wherever Amazon abuses workers, we’ll be there,” he added. “Amazon will not bust unions and get away with it. Amazon will not churn and burn American workers and get away with it. This corrupt corporate giant must answer to the Teamsters now, and we’re ready for the fight.”

In a statement, Teamsters said that “Amazon workers across the country have been rising up and demanding better workplace standards, and communities are increasingly demanding Amazon be held accountable for its worker injury rate, contribution to pollution, and most recently, a string of worker deaths at warehouse facilities in New Jersey.”

Earlier this month, the Teamsters launched its Amazon Division to support workers at the e-commerce giant.

Faced with increased worker organizing — including the establishment of the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) in New York in April and the first-ever work stoppage at the company’s air freight division in August — Amazon has fired organizers and unsuccessfully petitioned the National Labor Relations Board to overturn the ALU’s victory.

Mounting inequality is fueling protests around the globe. The global ruling class is determined to prevent these protests from employing the weapon that can bring them down—strikes.

“We feel like this is the only thing we can do,” said one nurse. “Hospitals tell us it’s our fault, but we’ve been actively involved and getting nowhere.”

Nurses seeking more than 30% increases in compensation by the end of the three-year contract

Thousands of nurses in Minnesota launched a three-day strike Monday over issues of pay and what they say is understaffing that has been worsened by the strains brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.

The labor action includes 15,000 nurses and seven healthcare systems in the Twin Cities and Duluth areas. Those groups have recruited temporary nurses and say they expect to maintain most services.

Top: Amazon Labor Union leader Christian Smalls at May Day 2021 rally. Bottom: Union members at the vote count; Starbucks workers in Falls Church, Virginia won

30-2.

The coronavirus pandemic, the resulting economic turmoil, and a tight labor market have laid the foundation for the current upsurge in labor organizing and workplace actions. This upsurge includes organizing campaigns around the country at over 250 Starbucks cafes, the nation’s first successful union election at an Amazon warehouse facility, successful organizing drives at colleges and universities nationwide, and the list goes on. Democrats, to the great consternation of the right and the business community, managed to inject an “employer neutrality” clause into the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. he clause requires corporations with more than five hundred employees to remain neutral during a union drive.[1] It only applies to corporations that participate in this low-interest loan program and therefore may have limited impact. Although employer neutrality has long been a centerpiece of AFL-CIO efforts at labor law reform, it has been a non-starter since it was first proposed during the Carter administration in 1977.

Nevertheless, with sufficient organizing and ferment, the present moment may hold the possibility for paradigm shifting labor relations provisions on the national and state level. Already President Biden has repeatedly used the bully pulpit of his office in support of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) union Kellogg’s strikers, urging a “yes” vote during the Bessemer Amazon union election and hosting a White House meeting with Amazon and Starbucks workers. In another sign of the administration’s support for organized labor, Biden and Labor Secretary Martin Walsh proposed sweeping changes to regulations on working conditions and organizing rights for hundreds of thousands of federal employees and government contractors. [2] Jennifer Abruzzo, whom Biden appointed as general counsel to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), stunned employers by issuing a memo deeming mandatory “captive audience” meetings to be unlawful. Given the widespread use by employers of these meetings to dissuade workers from voting for unionization, this posture holds great potential significance.

To consider how this may play out, history provides some useful examples of the positive interaction between politics and policy and mass labor organizing. The 1934 West Coast dockers/maritime strike took place a year ahead of the passage of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which provided a legal framework to enterprise-level or workplace-based bargaining. But the earlier passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) featured provisions giving workers the right to engage in concerted activity and bargain collectively over wages, hours, and conditions.[3] Although later invalidated by the Supreme Court in 1935, this law, with its sweeping industry regulations, was the product of social ferment and political will. Sensing that FDR had their back, passage of the NIRA gave courage and legitimacy to the 12,000 dockworkers who went on strike for eighty-four days on the West Coast.[4]

The assassination of two striking dockworkers led to the historic three-day general strike in San Francisco in July 1934. The strike was resolved by a National Longshoremen’s Board in October, mandating a single “coastwise” contract and a union-controlled hiring hall: two powerful sectoral features of International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) contracts that remain in effect to this day. The employers’ Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) made up of the giant stevedores and international shipping carriers still negotiates a “sectoral” agreement with the ILWU for all twenty-nine West Coast ports.5 The Juneteenth 2020 shutdown of West Coast ports in support of Black Lives Matter by the ILWU is a lasting demonstration of such sectoral power. Two key features led to the ILWU’s success in sectoral bargaining:

• Rank-and-file union leaders engaged in intense workplace organizing, while their community allies did deep political and ideological base-building in working-class communities. The lessons

learned from both failures and small successes over many years led to the union’s eventual success in 1934.

• The political moment in which great masses of Americans were disillusioned with the old ways and ready to support new economic and social initiatives. “President Roosevelt Wants You to Join a Union” became much more than a slogan; it was the sentiment of the body politic.

Students of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and labor struggles that led to other industry-wide or “sectoral bargaining” in the steel, auto, electrical, trucking, and rubber

industries can weave similar tales of workers organizing, striking, and garnering broad social and political support. The factors cited above which propelled the ILWU to victory are most certainly relevant to these other sectors. Recently in New Labor Forum, former president of the Communications Workers of America Larry Cohen and law professor Veena Dubal engaged in an interesting debate about sectoral bargaining.[6] Cohen argues that labor needs to dramatically reverse the declining percentage of private-sector workers in unions and enable unions to bargain master contracts by industrial sector.[7] The logic is simple enough: sectoral bargaining reduces the vicious antiunion impetus of an employer that is facing an enterprise-based negotiation with its employees in a sea of non-union competition. Cohen takes inspiration from many European countries where sectoral bargaining has been the norm since World War II.

Dubal cautions against quick and easy deals that—in exchange for sectoral representation —create a second class of workers, unprotected by traditional labor laws and wage and hour protections. Cohen acknowledges Dubal’s point, maintaining that any sectoral deal must be worker-led and organized and not a “sweetheart” agreement.

The Juneteenth 2020 shutdown of West Coast ports in support of Black Lives Matter by the ILWU is a lasting demonstration of [dockworker] . . . sectoral power.

Both Cohen and Dubal agree that while sectoral bargaining is an excellent “idea,” it risks an opportunistic approach to labor revitalization. In a VOX article entitled “Europe could have the secret to saving America’s unions,” journalist Dylan Matthews describes the woeful condition of the American labor movement and compares it with a more vibrant trade union situation in Europe. Matthews points to the unwillingness of U.S. private-sector unionized employers to accept generous union contracts with rights and benefits when they are faced with non-union competitors who are not saddled with the same conditions. He then points to the European solution of sectoral bargaining by declaring,

But workers in most European countries, and some other rich countries outside the U.S., have figured out an ingenious way around this. Unions there bargain not at the company level but at the sector level, negotiating for all workers in an entire industry rather than just one company or workplace.[8]

As we shall see, sectoral bargaining is not just an “ingenious” idea but a product of long histories of political and economic—and in some cases—even liberation struggles!

The European numbers are indeed impressive. In 2015, an average of 60 percent of the workers in the countries in the European Union were covered by collective bargaining agreements. The highest percentage is in France at 98 percent although only 7 to 8 percent of French workers belong to unions.[9] The low end is about 10 percent in Greece where nearly all bargaining has devolved to the enterprise level.[10] There are particular features to each country’s collective bargaining system, but a cursory look at the experience in both Germany and Italy shows how it reflects the time, place, and condition of social relations—and the intensity of class conflict.[11]

. . . [S]ectoral bargaining is . . . a product of long histories of political and economic—and in some cases—even liberation struggles!

In 1918 Germany, the specter of the Bolshevik and other socialist revolutions led management to the altar of sectoral labor agreements. The Stinnes–Legien Agreement of November 15, 1918, between Germany’s major industrial associations and moderate unions produced “labor peace” and a quasi-level playing field among competitive industrialists. And by cooperating (or giving the appearance of cooperating) with more accommodating union leaders, German cartels outflanked the left political parties and squelched revolutionary uprisings.[12]

In 1951, West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and Hans Bockler, head of the German Trade Union Confederation Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (DGB), performed a similar role. Fearing the left political parties emboldened by Stalin’s divisions just east of the Elbe River, the DGB sought to avoid strikes and maximize productivity and—while the export market lasted—pay workers within the sectoral agreement circle(s) decent wages and benefits.[13] The echoes of their brokered deal continue to the present with the largest German labor union IG Metall’s contemporary sectoral agreements.

Moving south, in the Italian case, not only did proponents of sectoral bargaining have to organize workers and their communities, they also had to engage in armed struggle for liberation.

The Italian Communist Party’s leadership of the resistance meant that its affiliated labor federation, the Confederazione Generale Italiana dei Lavoratori (CGIL), was in a good position to achieve sectoral bargaining after the fall of fascism. While the Italian Constitution of 1946 called for the registration of unions as exclusive representatives to bargain for all employees, the provision was not enforced because a bill regulating registration was never adopted. Instead, it is only because of the societal power exerted by the three main Italian Federations (CGIL, CISL, and UIL) that bargaining exists for national agreements for thirteen separate industrial sectors with the employer’s association, the Confindustria.[14]

During the onset of the Covid crisis in Italy, the three federations threatened a nationwide strike over the impact of the virus on workers and the designation of “essential” workers. Tripartite negotiations were immediately convened for eighteen hours by videoconference between the unions, employers, and the government. They hammered out an agreement. This arrangement was not enshrined in law but was a direct result of the union’s power. This power was recently tested by Fiat/Chrysler’s unsuccessful attempt to institute enterprise bargaining.[15]

The European experience shows that sectoral bargaining and other social democratic reforms reflect the balance of class forces and their strong history of class conflict. The dire straits of U.S. labor, particularly in the private sector where the percentage of represented workers is below 7 percent, necessitate a sense of urgency about reversing this falling “density.” In January 2020, the Harvard Labor Worklife Program issued a comprehensive “Clean Slate” proposal calling for the total revamping of U.S. labor law to bolster union and worker power. The proposal provides for European-style sectoral bargaining, “minority” or pre-majority unionism, and simplified representation procedures. The report also calls for worker representation on corporate boards of directors to provide more purview over management decisions that affect their lives.[16]

Most of the Clean Slate proposals are features of the western European Social Democratic postwar landscape brought to their societies through liberation struggles and intense class conflict. The report is breathtaking in its sweep and comprehensive character: certainly a wish list that no labor progressive could argue with. And the authors make very clear that it is not a road map for how to get there, just an elaboration of what is needed to correct the class imbalance in the United States.

The name of the report, “Clean Slate,” implies sweeping clean the existing labor relations system. But how is a new regime to be won if not birthed out of the old? In our view, it will be the existing organizations of the working class—those old dusty private-sector, enterprise-based unions and their public-sector counterparts—that must inevitably play a major role in any conceivable revamping of labor law. This was true in the 1930s when many of the existing AFL-affiliated unions, United Mine Workers, International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, and others played a crucial role in bankrolling and institutionalizing the new industrial unions.[17]

In our view, it will be the existing organizations of the working class . . . that must inevitably play a major role in any conceivable revamping of labor law.

A major part of enacting Clean Slate’s proposed reforms would involve the members and leaders of the most powerful organizations that working people have today—their existing trade unions. Signs of life in organizing largescale logistics companies like Amazon, when coupled with the power of unions such as the Teamsters or the United Food and Commercial Workers, could realize true sectoral bargaining in online retailing.

Despite the unfortunate title for their report, the authors acknowledge that such sweeping and ambitious reforms will only take place with the active agency of workers and their unions. The authors also heralded the “Red for Ed” teachers’ movement and the victorious chainwide Marriot hotel workers’ strike as signs of rebirth and inspiration going forward.

Since its publication, the upsurge in strikes has continued with inspiring victories at John Deere and Nabisco by graduate student workers and the fast-spreading NLRB election petitions at hundreds of Starbucks’ cafes and the recent victory of the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) at a Staten Island fulfillment center. These grassroots efforts and successes are the type of activity that can create a major shift in class relations and engender the possibility of sectoral bargaining.

We began this article by pointing to moments in history when the confluence of political ferment and smart organizing can bring great change—even the possibility of winning sectoral bargaining. The robust electoral politics in 2020 offered the opportunity to showcase the sectoral organizing and bargaining “idea” in the Democratic primaries and the general election. As the candidates sought labor’s support, it pressured them to articulate their vision for labor law reform. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) successfully did this at its October 2019 “Unions for All” conference in Los Angeles where presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren offered their full support for sectoral bargaining.[18]

Post-pandemic, a welcome discussion is occurring about how to raise the living standards of workers in whole sectors of the economy, particularly in those deemed “essential” in the Covid-19 crisis. The Harvard “Clean Slate” proposal aligns well with these large ambitions.

In the current political environment, labor unions might be more successful initially at the state and local level to pioneer changes in law and policy that can lead to sectoral bargaining. One proponent of a state-based sectoral approach is University of Michigan law professor Kate Andrias who points out:

Several states, including California and New York, already have tripartite commissions vested with the power to set wages and other standards. These commissions have existed for generations and have intermittently operated to bring labor and management together under state administrative supervision to set standards on an industry-by-industry basis.[19]

Andrias cites then Governor Cuomo’s use of New York’s Wage Board to set higher standards for fast-food workers in 2015 in response to the SEIU’s highly visible “Fight for Fifteen.” Andrias further documents some seventy wage board settlements at the state level that were used by unions to establish many sectoral bargaining arrangements in industries in the United States

between 1938 and 1942. And the aforementioned settlement of the maritime strike on the West Coast in 1934 was also mandated by a federal Wage Board, which also included a sectorwide coastwise contract and union hiring hall.

In another promising sign, legislation was filed to regulate wages and safety conditions in California’s fast-food sector and in New York’s nail salon industry.[20]

In the current political environment, labor unions might be more successful initially at the state and local level to pioneer changes in law and policy that can lead to sectoral bargaining.

Sectoral bargaining is such a worthy goal, and with less than 7 percent density in the private sector, it is tempting for some to imagine expedient routes to resurgence based on labor- management cooperation schemes or regulatory jiu-jitsu. Should we achieve new forms of sectoral bargaining, it will be a reflection of working-class power, not an idea that will replace the difficult external and internal organizing of the labor movement and its committed cadres. There is no escaping the fundamentals of the long, arduous slog of organizing workers.

Yet, thinking big, creative imagination, and situational agility are necessary for a labor renaissance—and thankfully workers at Amazon, Starbucks, and many other companies are showing the way forward.

On April 1, 2022, against nearly impossible odds, the ALU, a new, independent union, won the first union election at the “JFK8,” Amazon’s Staten Island Fulfillment Center.21 And since its

first victory at two stores in Buffalo last December, Starbucks Workers United has now won union elections at over 200 stores—comprising over 4,400 employees—in over 30 states.

Prior to these NLRB-supervised certification elections, there was plenty of skepticism about both campaigns in the labor movement and among the pundits. To most experts, union campaigns at small cafes or at a giant warehouse with only a small organizing committee, no budget, and no experience—up against ferocious anti-union campaigns—were obviously doomed. Except they are winning! (See “High-Octane Organizing at Starbucks” by John Logan in this issue.)

What these winning union votes makes clear is that workers are self-organizing, and when it happens, the typical organizing tactics and strategies may not apply. We need to have an eclectic approach, recognizing that there will be many successes and failures in what will certainly be a long-term effort to build strong unions at Amazon and Starbucks.

These improbable victories support what some union organizers call the “metro strategy.”[22] Workers are winning at locations concentrated in metropolitan areas where there is generally broader support for unions. And victories in just a few cities with a pro-union environment seem to be having a huge ripple effect.

There is no escaping the fundamentals of the long, arduous slog of organizing workers.

Amazon and Starbucks will use every legal maneuver possible to avoid an obligation to bargain. But assuming the campaigns survive the legal obstacles to certification, all eyes will turn toward the process of negotiating first contracts. Hopefully, the new union members will recognize that their negotiations for one warehouse or a small percentage of cafes are taking place in a fishbowl: with all their coworkers and the entire labor movement watching! That environment necessitates breaking out of the traditional legal straitjacket and conducting bargaining as “theater”—heralding the cause of justice for the workers to their community, their customers, and the entire labor movement.

Fortunately for Amazon workers, the warehouse and delivery sector still has substantial working-class power. Dockworkers on both coasts continue to wield power at key strategic nodes of International commerce and the U.S. railroad freight lines are all wall-to-wall union. And then there is the biggest and most important single-sector agreement: the Teamsters’ contract with United Parcel Service (UPS). The current contract, uniting some 340,000 Teamsters, will expire on August 1, 2023. Newly elected president Sean O’Brien and the International Union executive board are committed to waging a strong campaign to win major contract wage and language improvements. (See “Teamsters Confront Amazon: An Early Assessment” by Ellen Reese and Jake Alimahomed-Wilson in this issue.)

There can be no question that the scale of this agreement will also impact wages and working conditions for nearly one million U.S. Amazon workers as well as hundreds of thousands of workers at FedEx, the U.S. Postal Service, DHL, and many smaller outfits. That sectoral impact provides the Teamsters with a unique opportunity to elevate their bargaining from specifically UPS to the entire warehouse and delivery sector. If the union leadership embraces that approach, it could consider bringing workers from these companies to its negotiations with UPS, making the sectoral impact of its negotiations explicit.

The far bigger, and more important, challenge in 2023 will be for the Teamsters, along with a broader movement of other unions and allies, to devote substantial organizing resources beyond its UPS membership to build sector-wide unity among package and delivery workers. When hundreds of thousands of Teamsters at UPS are mobilized to fight—and possibly strike—for a good contract, the labor movement has a unique opportunity to inspire and motivate Amazon workers to take similar, parallel actions. By engaging workers at Amazon in the 2023 contract campaign, the entire sector will be put on notice that package and delivery workers are ready to fight for—and win—the good jobs our communities need.

Authors’ Note

The authors are grateful to Norbert Dall and Marco Biasi who contributed to our respective understanding of the German and Italian experience with sectoral bargaining, and Trent McDonald for comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Notes

1. Daily Labor Report, “Virus Loans to Come With Union Neutrality Pledge for Companies,” Bloomberg Law, March 26, 2020, available at https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-laborreport/

virus-loans-to-come-with-union-neutrality-pledge-for-companies.

2. Eli Rosenberg, “White House Offers Blueprint for Union Growth as Labor Movement Struggles to Gain Ground,” The Washington Post, February 2, 2022, available at https://www.

washingtonpost.com/business/2022/02/07/white-house-report-labor-unions.

3. https://www.ourdocuments.gov/print_friendly.php?flash=true&page=&doc=66&title=National+Industrial+Recovery+Act+%281933%29.

4. Rod Palmquist, “Labor’s Great War on the Seattle Waterfront Part 2—The Start of the Great 1934 Longshore Strike,” Waterfront Workers History Project, Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies, University of Washington, available at https://depts.washington.edu/ dock/34strikehistory_part2.shtml.

5. International Longshore and Warehouse Union, “The ILWU Story,” available at https://www.ilwu.org/history/the-ilwu-story/.

6. “On the Contrary,” New Labor Forum, Winter 2022, available at https://newlaborforum.cuny.edu/2022/01/26/on-the-contrary-a-debate-onsectoral-bargaining/.

7. 1955 = 35 percent to today = 6.7 percent.

8. Emphasis added. Dylan Matthews, “Europe could have the secret to saving America’s unions,” VOX, April 17, 2017, available at https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/17/15290674/

union-labor-movement-europe-bargaining-fight-15-ghent. For another optimistic perspective, see David Madland, “The Re-emergence of Sectoral Bargaining in the US, Britain, Australia and Canada,” OnLabor, April 22, 2021, available at https://onlabor.org/the-re-emergence-of-sectoralbargaining-in-the-us-britain-australia-and-canada/.

9. European labor relations are generally characterized by declining membership but continue “Coverage,” meaning broad representation of workers irrespective of their membership.

10. Lionel Fulton, “Worker representation in Europe,” 2015, Labour Research Department and ETUI. Produced with the assistance of the SEEurope Network, online publication available at www.worker-participation.eu/National-Industrial-Relations.

11. “Map of European Industrial Relations,” available at https://www.worker-participation.eu/National-Industrial-Relations/Map-of-European-Industrial-Relations.

12. https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/tuel/03-%20Revolutionary%20Crisis%20of%201918-1921.pdf.

13. Evan McGaughey, “The Codetermination Bargains: The History of German Corporate and Labour Law,” available at http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/61593/1/The%20codetermination%20bargains%20the%20history%20of%20german%20corporate%20and%20labour%20law.pdf.

14. https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1987/03/rpt-1full.pdf.

15. “Fiat: Marchionne’s Gamble,” The Financial Times, available at https://www.ft.com/content/a9e53516-cbf5-11df-bd28-00144feab49a.

16. “A ‘Clean Slate’ for the future of labor law,” available at https://today.law.harvard.edu/clean-slate-future-labor-law/.

17. Irving Bernstein, A History of the American Worker: Turbulent Years (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1969).

18. “Unions for All” conference.

19. Kate Andrias, “A Seat at the Table: Sectoral Bargaining for the Common Good,” Dissent Magazine, Spring 2019, available at https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/a-seat-atthe-

table-sectoral-bargaining-for-the-commongood.

20. Brian Callaci, “Antitrust And Labor Movements Return to Their Roots,” Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, April 18, 2022, available at https://democracyjournal.org/arguments/antitrust-andlabor-movements-return-to-their-roots/.

21. Amazon Labor Union, available at https://www.amazonlaborunion.org/.

22. https://stansburyforum.com/2021/10/01/thinkbigger-new-possibilities-for-building-workerspower-at-amazon.

Author Biographies

Peter Olney is retired Organizing Director of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. He has been a labor organizer for fifty years in Massachusetts and California.

Rand Wilson has worked as a union organizer and labor communicator for more than forty years.

The post Sectoral Bargaining: Labor’s Pathway to Power? appeared first on New Labor Forum.

“Strong unions and worker contracts are a core pillar of the Green New Deal,” the two groups said. “We owe so much to the workers who made one of the most progressive agreements a reality.”

There are moments when a particular group of workers can become the political focus for the wider working class. They can act as a pole of attraction, they can become a conduit for a wider program and new forms of struggle.

The current wave of strikes in Britain shows that significant sections of the working class feel both the need and ability to defend their own interests. It has come at a point in the deepening crisis where the mainstream political establishment is unable to present meaningful state-driven solutions.

In desperation, the controlling Tory party has ditched Johnson and created several months of vacuum where they don’t even pretend to generate plans to ease hardships. That convulsion in the governing party is not unique to Britain. Unable to respond to crisis and pacify the population, governments elsewhere in Western Europe have also dissolved. In France, Macron’s party have lost control of the National Assembly and, in Italy, Draghi’s coalition government has collapsed.

Meanwhile, the leadership of the British Labour Party has been intent on showing themselves as the next Government to prop up the capitalist status quo in Britain. They are so keen to prove that point that, week in, week out, they have gone to great lengths to distance themselves from struggling workers.

While the absence of a plan is lamented by the reformists, we think it opens up an opportunity to strengthen the chance for workers’ struggles to progress from singular defensive battles to a wider political program for the working class.

Things are churning

We can see that things are churning and that the two elements of such a working class program are floating around.

Firstly (and primarily), this is the will and ability of workers to lead their own struggles. Recent wildcat strikes and canteen sit-downs at various Amazon warehouses and unofficial street blockades by refinery construction workers are the first indicators that it’s not only the ruling class that is unable to rule, but that the ruled are also unwilling to remain passive.

Secondly, we see a relatively widespread response to campaigns such as ‘Don’t Pay’, which in other times would not have managed to reach beyond the small lefty bubble. However, what is lacking is a collective working class subject that takes on the responsibility to spread and enforce such a refusal to pay for their crisis. This vacuum on the side of the working class is then filled by the traditional trade union organisations in the form of the ‘Enough is Enough’-campaign, which currently has little substantively new to offer, other than the usual protest rallies and speeches by their leading figures.

The role of collectives of workers

When workers begin to struggle there is invariably an unevenness in the levels of combativity, self organisation and clarity around objectives. In these moments it has often been the case that a group of workers has become a catalyst for the wider class. So, for example, in Argentina in the early 2000s, factory workers at Brukman and Zanon were able to play such a role, forming bridges between a collective workforce, the unemployed and the wider movement. During a period of large-scale job cuts and factory closures, Bosch-Siemens workers in Germany created an autonomous collective that tried to coordinate resistance against restructuring beyond company and sectoral boundaries. During the Arab Spring, textile factory workers in Mahalla in Egypt were a central pole of orientation, while in Iran it was workers at the Haft Tappeh sugar factory. In the USA, teachers in Chicago formed ties between striking workers and local working class families suffering under austerity. In Genoa the autonomous dock workers collective CALP engages in practical working class internationalism and refuses to process ships carrying military equipment (please watch this new video interview with one of the militants of CALP). Historically, it was workers’ committees such as at Magneti Marelli in Italy that organised both factory struggles, rent strikes, occupations or reduction of transport and energy prices together.

It is not easy to determine the necessary ingredients for the formation of such workers’ vanguards. The fact that workers have worked together for years, often as part of an industrial form of cooperation, seems important to form mutual trust, accountability and self-confidence. Your position in the wider social fabric, for example as transport workers or teachers, is significant when it comes to your struggle having a wider impact on the daily lives of others and the ability to enforce a public proletarian debate. There is a difference between formal and more instantaneous ‘horizontalism’ a la ‘Occupy’, which often creates unaccountable spokespersons, and the organic rank-and-file structures of longer-term shop-floor relationships. There is also a close relation between the collective and creative experience of changing the material world in a manufacturing or engineering process and the capacity to imagine wider social change. But, as we could see during the Lucas struggle in the UK in the 1970s, this is not primarily a question of technical know-how, but of both collective intelligence and combativeness. It is the experience of an offensive struggle that sets a specific group of workers apart from the wider class, the ability and will to break the deadlock of bourgeois status quo and rules. These are preconditions for the emergence of a more organised political debate amongst workers and the decision to reach out to the wider class. They take on the responsibility to fight not only for their own conditions, but to act as a point of reference for other, often more dispersed or defensive struggles.

The inspirational struggle of GKN workers in Italy

Recently the GKN workers in Italy have taken on this role. As an industrial workforce, they had obtained a certain internal cohesion, which helped to create factory assemblies and a struggle collective when the closure of the plant was announced in summer 2021. They took hold of the factory and, at the same time, organised multiple demonstrations with other local workers, addressing the issue of precarious working conditions that they themselves had never had to put up with. Instead of defending ‘individual jobs’, they saw their collective workforce and the industrial installation as part of a regional social and creative fabric. Together with scientists and researchers, they have tried to develop an alternative productive and environmentally beneficial plan for the factory, e.g. a transition from manufacturing parts for fossil-fuelled individual passenger vehicles to greener public transport. We highly recommend watching this new video documentary about their struggle!

In the meantime, GKN workers in Birmingham in the UK were also threatened with massive job cuts. Unfortunately they were not able to generate a similar response, perhaps partly because too much hope was placed in ‘the politicians who would help to save quality made in Britain’. Instead of putting pressure on workmates in other GKN factories in the UK to come out in support, the focus was on convincing the political parties and ‘the public’. We have seen similar dead-ends during the initial trade union reaction when British Airways announced to ‘fire and rehire’ in 2020.

In the UK during the last two years, we have seen an increased number of strikes. Initially about ‘fire and rehire’, now predominantly for higher wages. The situation is complex, some workers face job cuts, while workers in other areas can use the labour shortage in their favour. As a class, we should use the structural power that we have in some jobs or sectors to defend colleagues in weaker positions. The trade unions have to comply with laws aimed at restricting workers’ struggles and are therefore unable to overcome sectorial and professional divisions – and the competing interests between different unions. The question is, will workers themselves feel strong enough to challenge this? At Heathrow airport for example, cargo workers were doing heavy overtime during the lockdown period, while workers in the passenger departments were in a weak position due to lack of work. The union could have used the clout of the cargo workers to defend conditions of the passenger workers, but they didn’t. Hopefully local strike solidarity networks can become more than just cheerleaders, but support the formation of independent workers’ collectives that combine hard struggle with a wider outreach.

What with the prospect of 15 – 20% inflation and a looming recession, times are tough. In this moment we should support any workforce that is willing to defy the legal straightjacket and enter into an offensive struggle. We need to draw a clear line between our needs as workers and the needs of the employers, who will try to disguise their own needs as the ‘needs of the economy’. We have to support any workforce that takes the responsibility to fight not only for themselves, but for a wider working class program: “No job cuts, no wage cuts! We all work, we all work less! As workers we prioritise work that is useful for society and limit work that is mainly for profits! We organise our own struggle!”

The post ‘Don’t Pay’ or ‘Enough is Enough’: The role of workers’ vanguards in the current moment – Lessons to learn from GKN workers in Italy and others first appeared on Angry Workers.

In a period of extreme social and economic crises, when the major labor unions have reduced their organizing programs to a fraction of what they once were and the courts stand athwart any effort to protect workers’ interests, scrappy new independent unions raise hope against hope that maybe — just maybe — workers can fight […]

Thousands of Northern California Kaiser Permanente mental health clinicians, members of the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), are on strike.

Archive for category: Labor

The Industrial Workers of the World pioneered a radical unionism that built a small but incredibly dedicated group of unionists and union supporters — which is why American capitalists and politicians quickly decided they needed to stop the union.

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