We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Sunday, May 6, 2012

The Civil Wars in the U.S. Labor Movement

Click here to access article--a book review by Peter Brogan from Canadian Dimension.

The book entitled, The Civil Wars in the U.S. Labor Movement: Birth of a New Workers’ Movement or the Death Throes of the Old? by Steve Early is reviewed.
In the name of streamlining its organizing efforts, SEIU has carried out a widespread program of merging locals, opening call centers to service current members (ostensibly to free up staff and resources for new organizing and political work), and signing “neutrality” or other partnership agreements with employers, usually from positions of weakness that have led to the exchange of major concessions (like the right to strike) for union recognition.

The importance of focusing on these new “innovations,” as Early does in Civil Wars, is significant because such practices have been seen, to our detriment, as pointing the way forward for the union movement in both the United States and Canada. Civil Wars offers a searing critique of these practices....
Early also suggests ways to revitalize unions.
Perhaps the most important lesson Early highlights in his concluding chapter is that what most animates workers to struggle is a “sense of organizational ownership, a willingness to take risks and make sacrifices because the union they were trying to build, extend, defend, or reclaim inspired strong allegiance based on relationships of trust and mutual respect.” If we take nothing else from Civil Wars, it should be that: “Workers do not unite and fight – for organizing rights, a first contract, a better contract, or a better functioning and more democratic union – unless they have reason to believe in each other and the leadership that has emerged from their own ranks….