This article was originally published on Truthout.org for Amy’s Walking the Walk series.
No force did more to build the American middle class than organized labor. In recent decades, however, unions have been decimated. Despite concerted efforts to turn the tide, the movement now represents only 7 percent of workers in the private sector. Never have working people in this country been more in need of a collective voice. Yet, we must ask, can labor alone create the change we need? If it can’t do it by itself, what role can unions play in supporting a wider progressive uprising?
Few individuals are offering more interesting, credible and challenging views on this question than veteran labor strategist Stephen Lerner. Ezra Klein recently wrote in The Washington Post: “Ask union types who the smartest labor organizer is and they’re likely to point you towards [SEIU] organizer Stephen Lerner, who planned the legendary Justice for Janitors campaign.” In the most recent issue of New Labor Forum, Lerner has an essay titled “A New Insurgency Can Only Arise Outside the Progressive and Labor Establishment.” It is a must-read for all those who wish to think seriously about creating change in this country.
On a recent trip to Washington, DC, I had a chance to sit down with Lerner on his back porch and have a conversation about his article. I walked away with the resolve that never before has it been so important for labor to have an inside-outside strategy. This means that unions can’t just work to get better politicians elected, but must also help foster a wider grassroots insurgency that can directly challenge the forces that have undermined the American middle class.
We are about to enter an election year, a time when we would normally put all our eggs in the basket of electoral campaigning. But Lerner makes a compelling case that it is necessary for the labor movement to maintain a dual focus. And that will mean changing the way we usually operate.
In his essay, Lerner argues that, amid efforts by the super-rich and major corporations to restructure the economy for their own benefit, unions have not been able to formulate a response by themselves. “Unfortunately,” he writes:
organized labor can be as much of an obstacle as it is a solution to mounting a movement for social justice that might reverse this trend and offer hope for the future.
Unions have the money, members, and capacity to organize, build, and fuel a movement designed to challenge the power of the corporate elite. But despite the fact that thousands of dedicated members, leaders, and staff have worked their hearts out to rebuild the labor movement, unions are just big enough – and just connected enough to the political and economic power structure – to be constrained from leading the kinds of activities that are needed.
Lerner cites examples in which unions have called off high-profile protests or acts of civil disobedience because they were worried that the actions would be perceived as too confrontational, or concerned that such protests would have negative legal, economic or political ramifications.
“If our goal is not to offend anyone,” Lerner told me, echoing a point he makes in his essay, “we might as well not do anything at all.”
I agree with one of his central points here: The more labor is seen as a narrow special interest group, representing the small pools of workers who have union contracts, the more its power will continue to decline. It will be left fighting defensive battles to hold on to the remaining vestiges of the New Deal, even as these are successively whittled away.
In order to change this, labor needs to address the issues that are of central concern to working people in this country, even if those issues fall outside the workplace. This means taking on the big banks, fighting foreclosures, pushing for public investment in our neighborhoods, reversing efforts to strip the state of revenue so that we can pay for essential social services.
I talked with Lerner about the groups that are doing this. A variety of national and regional networks – including National People’s Action, the Alliance for a Just Society and the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment - are organizing in communities around just such issues. They are making savvy decisions about which specific lenders, employers and politicians they target. They are coordinating with other community groups across state lines to share best practices for campaign strategy and leadership development.
The labor movement has an urgent need to engage such allies and join in community-wide campaigns in cities across the country. Housing justice, predatory lending, transportation, immigrant rights, the elimination of public services: these are the issues that a huge number of Americans – including those who are union members – are confronting on a day-to-day basis. Efforts such as Service Employees International Union’s (SEIU) Fight for a Fair Economy are starting to join with community allies on such fights, recognizing that labor needs an outspoken progressive movement bigger than itself if it is to succeed.
“One day protests won’t do it,” Lerner told me. “We need actions that escalate, that really grow and gain intensity over time.” In his New Labor Forum essay, Lerner argues that unions should financially support – but not exercise control over – “a new wave of direct action and mass activity.” He uses this year’s protests in Madison, which linked unions with community allies and embraced militant tactics such as building occupations, as an example. More recently, in The Washington Post, he discussed the Occupy Wall Street movement as part of the same model.
Talking with Lerner about how labor might fund, but not control, such protest movements, I expressed some skepticism. Practically speaking, I asked, isn’t it unrealistic to expect local union leaders to hand over resources to community mobilizations without being able to mandate any clear outcomes?
“It’s not a blank check,” Lerner said. “Unions should be engaged with the movement. They should be encouraging their members to join broader efforts and sharing information. But labor sometimes has too much at stake, economically and politically, to take the lead itself.”
As the election year approaches, I believe that Lerner’s argument has profound implications for how unions approach their political program. Now more than ever, labor needs to revive an inside-outside strategy by marrying its political muscle with engagement in community organizing.
In the past decade, unions have developed more sophisticated electoral field campaigns than ever before. This gives the labor movement sway among elected officials, particularly on the local and state levels. The problem is that, in most parts of the country, we are not holding politicians accountable to any concrete agenda. These lesser-evil politicians have no real stake in helping to expand our ability to build up an institutional counterbalance to the power of corporate America. To hold them accountable, we need a progressive movement that applies pressure from the outside.
“People in this country know that the economy is rigged and it’s not working for them,” Lerner said. “They are angry about it, and they are ready to mobilize in ways we haven’t seen in generations. I think unions can play a part in this process.”
What is important about the community mobilizations that Lerner discusses is that they are gaining steam at the same time that labor’s electoral machinery is gearing up. Instead of letting the election cycle distract us from the broader fights we need to be having, the mobilizations can allow unions to be working on both inside and outside tracks. Being engaged with community allies who are undertaking escalating public actions makes labor part of a wider progressive insurgency that is articulating an agenda for how to make the economy fair again, and that is putting that vision out in the street.
“I understand why unions sometimes can’t risk their relationships with certain employers or politicians,” Lerner said. “But that can’t stop efforts to create accountability for corporations and for politicians. Unions need to take a leap of faith and support the uprisings that are working to rebalance power in our country.”
A PDF of Lerner’s article can be found on the New Labor Forum web site here.
This was originally published on Truthout.org for Amy’s Walking the Walk series.
President Obama’s speech about jobs last week was a step forward. But we need to do better. We need to do better on policy, and better on politics.
Here’s what that means:
On policy, Obama’s jobs proposal is a lot like his administration’s health care reform.
If passed, the act would provide some measure of relief for Americans who desperately need it. The fact that it extends unemployment insurance and could create as many as 1.9 million jobs in 2012, according to Mark Zandi at Moody’s Analytics, is something that we should not take lightly, even if we think that the plan does not go far enough. The president was right when he noted that too many people “are living week to week, paycheck to paycheck, even day to day. They need help and they need it now.” Just as the health care bill was certainly imperfect, but nevertheless allowed tens of thousands who were previously excluded to gain health care coverage, the administration’s jobs act does offer some short-term relief.
Unfortunately, its gains will hardly be enough to offset the damage done to the pubic sector in recent years. With hiring in the private sector barely limping forward, the government is an absolutely critical employer. Yet, the administration has been complicit in accepting a framework of austerity and agreeing to cut back essential public services. Doing better on jobs will require a robust defense of government and President Obama has yet to provide this.
In terms of the private sector, we must recognize that providing tax incentives for businesses will not be enough. We’ve known for decades that creating favorable terms for business to invest does not translate into job creation in the absence of policy mechanisms that require it. Unless we explicitly mandate that businesses produce new jobs – and good jobs – as a condition of receiving public support, the record shows that they will not create the employment we need. This is not the time to hand out public money with no accountability. Tax breaks and other incentives should be tied to measurable job creation, because without real accountability, the relief offered by the job act will be all too fleeting.
Even more than policy, we need to do better in terms of politics. And this is where the Obama administration’s proposal really fails.
It fails because it does not contain enough of substance to excite the Democratic base, yet it will still be ardently opposed by the Republicans. Given the extraordinarily obstructionist track record of the conservatives in Congress, we can expect them to fight anything that Democrats put on the table. Therefore, overtures designed to bring them in are pointless. Putting forward a bold, progressive program at least allows us to set the framework for debate. It forces them to debate on our terms and makes them have to explain to the American people why they are opposing policies that would be substantive solutions to our economic problems. In contrast, proposals filled with pre-emptive concessions do little to reframe the debate and they do nothing to compel the electoral coalition that put Obama in office to feel energized and invested in supporting the White House jobs drive.
Moving forward, however, not everything is up to the White House. Progressives are right to be dissatisfied, yet we, too, must do better on politics. We have to be prepared to build a movement – not just have an internal debate in Washington about what’s good or bad about the president’s actions. This means relearning how to do the inside-outside dance with an elected leader. Electing better insiders, while also turning up the heat from the outside, requires doing more than lambasting the president for his failures. We must create the political space and the political will among lawmakers to push better solutions.
The need for us to create outside pressure is not unique to Obama and it is not a function of our judgment about his moral compass or political aptitude. It is always a crucial part of the equation for creating political change in America. Unless politicians feel legitimate pressure to do otherwise, they will always engage in a lowest-common-denominator game of legislative policy making, with self-preservation as its center of gravity. Our job is to compel them to pursue solutions more ambitious than they would be inclined to take up otherwise.
As we work to advance real job-creation measures, we must make the stakes of this debate clear. The Democrats have yet to hold the Republicans accountable for what they are really doing: If they are not putting forward policies which allow those who work hard and play by the rules to be rewarded, conservatives are tearing at the civic fabric of our nation. They are destroying any sense of enfranchisement that Americans have in this country.
They cannot be allowed to do this without a fight. We must do better.
Taking Back Labor Day
This article was originally published on Truthout.org.
While many would say there is little for working people to celebrate as we approach this Labor Day, I see new hope in the rising number of working people standing up to fight back for themselves and all working-class families. Despite an unprecedented wave of attacks on our country’s workers, or maybe because of them, working people across the country have begun to come together and fight back to reclaim their rights and voice in our economic and political debates.
If given the chance to truly flourish, this rising fightfor true independent political power for working people, whether you are in a union or not, has the potential to repaint the landscape of our economy for the good.
The last few years of the Great Recession has pounded on average Americans, driving workers wages down and unemployment up. Their suffering has been compounded by ceaseless attacks from extreme right-wing business interests that are seeking to undermine the very institutions that helped create the middle class and make the United States the greatest country in the world. Anti-worker and anti-union forces have launched a multi-front war in which working people are collateral damage in their efforts to gain greater power and profits. Corporate control and influence at all levels of government have resulted in the elimination of worker’s rights to collectively bargain through legislation like Ohio’s Senate Bill 5 and Wisconsin’s anti-union legislation. Those same interests are seeking to dismantle any institutions that put limits on their power, including the National Labor Relations Board, the main federal agency charged with enforcing laws to protect workers. It is a nationally coordinated campaign driven by organizations like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) that proliferates anti-worker and pro-corporate legislation and are funded by the likes of the Koch Brothers.
In the face of the onslaught, average Americans have come together armed with little more than the strength of their numbers and the determination of folks with little left to lose. In Wisconsin, hundreds of thousands braved the cold to fight Governor Walker’s extreme agenda. While they lost the initial battle, they never gave up and later fought back with recall elections that changed the balance of power, if not outright control in their legislature. In Ohio and Michigan and states across the country, voter anger has sent anti-worker leaders into a partial retreat as the backlash against anti-worker legislation has driven down the polling numbers for Republican governors once thought untouchable in the strength of their popularity. Across the country, Americans supported 45,000 striking Verizon workers, forcing the telecommunications giant back to the negotiating table to work in good faith with their employees. And in hundreds of town halls and events across the country, thousands of working people are giving their Congressional representatives an earful on their failure to make any real progress on the job crisis.
The cumulative effect has started to change the national political debate. The conversation slowly, but surely, is shifting from debts and deficits to jobs and growth. Top-tier presidential candidates are rushing to be first out of the gate with jobs proposals. President Obama will address Congress and the nation about what we hope will be a bold plan to put people back to work. Congress, with approval numbers already at historic lows, will be judged by their dedication to growth-oriented strategies or they will face an even greater backlash against their inertia and political stalemates. Leaders in Washington are now recognizing what million of Americans already know – we can’t cut our way out of a bad economy, we have to grow our way out. Deficits will shrink as millions of Americans happily return to work and are able to contribute their share from a steady paycheck.
The tables are turning in another way. Americans’ faith in government’s ability to solve the major problems facing this country have hit an all-time low. So, they are standing up for themselves because they no longer believe that their government and elected leaders will stand up for them. As a result, working people are rebuilding an independent political force akin to the labor movement that transformed this country in the early 20th century. It is a progressive movement the does not rely on party or individual icons. It is not beholden to any particular institution or individual. It is growing organically in every corner of our country, and national leaders are now quickly moving to follow its lead.
Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, echoed the frustration of working people recently when he declared the AFL’s plan to build its own political structures and organizations rather than contribute to and depend on the Democratic Party’s political operation. In a recent interview he stated:
“We’re going to use a lot of our money to build structures that work for working people” Trumka said. “You’re going to see us give less money to build structures for others and more of our money will be used to build our own structure.”
This represents a fundamental shift in labor’s traditional approach and bodes well for creating the infrastructure we need to affect real and lasting change for working people in this country.
Other labor organizations will likely follow suit, and many are already building the process sparked in Wisconsin of bringing union and nonunion workers together in their mutual fight for survival.
One group that has served this mission for nearly a decade, Working America, an affiliate of the AFL-CIO, works to bring nonunion voters out as activists on issues impacting all working people and unions. Their extensive canvass program and activist mobilization is right now on the ground all over Ohio – in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Canton – engaging both union and nonunion voters on how Governor Kasich’s anti-worker bill SB-5 (now known as Issue 2) negatively effects their communities. In August alone, they knocked on 70,000 doors and had 25,000 conversations about the bill.
We Are Ohio is another example of union and nonunion activists coming together to push back on the wide-spread attacks on middle-class workers. After Governor Kasich and Republicans in the legislature passed Senate Bill 5, which strips public workers of their collective bargaining rights, a broad coalition came together under the We Are Ohio banner to fight back and put a recall of the repressive legislation on the ballot. The law required that the group collect more than 230,000 signatures to put the initiative on the ballot. After more than 10,000 volunteers worked across the state, We Are Ohio and over 6,000 supporters marched through Columbus and delivered nearly 1.3 million signatures to the secretary of state’s office. That’s more than five times the required number of signatures
These efforts are not isolated incidents. The Service Employees International Union’s hugely successful Fight for a Fair Economy campaign canvassed and engaged tens of thousands of nonunion workers in more than a dozen major cities across the country. The progressive movement at large also is coming together with new energy around economic justice with effective alliances like We Are One and the newly birthed American Dream Movement turning out tens of thousands of disenfranchised voters to speak out on economic justice issues.
When President Obama addresses the nation this week and presents his vision on jobs, we can only hope that he will also follow the lead of the thousands of working people standing up and demanding bold solutions to the big problems facing American families. Working people’s tolerance for Washington’s inaction has reached its limit and they no longer are just demanding change; they are making it for themselves. On this Labor Day, let’s solute these new pioneers, seeking to be the heirs to the best of what America has historically been able to offer.
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