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In unions all across the United States — with a few exceptions — radical members and staffers have been waiting for Godot, dreaming of a moment when their leadership takes the membership away from the next contract or organizing battle and to a broader agenda of economic justice. They wondered, for instance, when their presidents would start mobilizing to push Congress for universal health care rather than bargaining with employers for an attractive insurance package for their members, a strategy that might boost a union re-election campaign but won’t alter the lack of access to healthcare and the underlying structure of inequality.
The radicals from the Sixties, former college anti-sweatshop activists and self-educated rank-and-filers are a minority in a small club, as just less than 12 percent of the nation’s workforce is unionized. And as the U.S. labor movement’s influence has been waning since the 1970s, these radicals have gone to work each day, putting aside their hopes of mobilizing the working class in an anti-capitalist revolution, and focused on electing Democrats, easing laws concerning union elections and defending pensions.
But something has happened. With the Occupy Wall Street protests well into their second month and growing in numbers, unions, including the nation’s main labor federation, the AFL-CIO, have come out strongly in support. “It’s important to recognize that there’s a long stretch of the history of the mainstream labor movement where it would be hard to imagine them coming out in favor of an anti-capitalist direct action,” said Janice Fine, a professor at the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University at New Brunswick.
Broad Alliances
In a sense, the broadening of labor’s agenda has been going on for years as unions have fought to stay relevant in a post-industrial economy. The nation’s largest union, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has formed alliances with community groups to win organizing campaigns and attack the Republican economic agenda. Unions today often campaign by urging the public to support them during workplace conflicts because labor cutbacks would hurt the consumers, not because siding with labor over corporate greed is the moral thing to do.
The Occupy Wall Street movement represents something on a whole new level. Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100, a 37,000-member union with a radical history, has been at the forefront of labor support, going so far as to seek an injunction to stop the NYPD from forcing its members to transport arrested OWS protesters. Labor support is growing on the institutional level. 1199/SEIU sent members to provide medical assistance. Several big unions including the United Federation of Teachers and District Council 37 have lent nearby office space to OWS working groups. And email blasts from the AFL-CIO and unions urged members to join with the protesters in Liberty Park Oct. 14 to defend the OWS encampment from a possible eviction.
Jackie DiSalvo, a retired member of the Professional Staff Congress (CUNY professors union) and active member of the OWS labor outreach committee, noted that OWS participants have been constantly meeting with new union representatives to assist with other labor conflicts around the city, including organizing against Walmart. OWS protesters marched Oct. 21 with the Communications Workers of America, which is in a tough bargaining after a brief strike in August. “We’ve grown a lot,” DiSalvo said. “Even the more conservative unions are supporting Occupy Wall Street.”
The most high profile alliance has been the sustained OWS presence at Sotheby’s, protesting the auction house’s continued lockout of 43 Teamster art handlers despite posting the biggest profits in the company’s history. “This is a sophisticated group,” said Jason Ide, Teamster Local 814 president. “Nobody needed to tell them that this was the kind of fight they’re having. This is where the 1 percent shops. The people who own this place are part of the Wall Street economy.”
Occupy Wall Street protesters have an itch; they want this taken to the next level.
“We should have 100,000 people out here,” TWU Local 100 organizer J.P. Patafio said while joining the columns of protesters Oct. 14 to resist the eviction in Liberty Park. He noted that nearly 25 percent of New York City workers are unionized, “so we got work to do.”
There are opportunities. SEIU Local 32BJ represents 25,000 commercial building cleaners in the city, many of whom serve the FIRE sector (Finance, Insurance and Real Estate), and their contract expires at the end of December. While bargaining hasn’t started, the union is bracing itself for draconian giveback demands. “We are working, visiting buildings, talking to our members, and workers are preparing for a possible strike,” said SEIU Local 32BJ organizer Saul Nieves in Liberty Park.
No one should expect the union to prolong a strike just for the sake of OWS, but if this strike occurred, it would paint a perfect picture, and create a new local campaign, for the movement: Wall Street greed against “the help.” And next year, TWU Local 100 will probably have a bitter contract fight with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is expected to demand both worker concessions and service cuts to fill its yawning budget gap.
Embracing the Left
This is where the natural link between this union and OWS becomes evident. TWU Local 100 President John Samuelsen didn’t run as a radical. In fact, he ran on a platform of fighting for a decent contract for transit workers. But what the left-wing faction of that union has said, and what Samuelsen has become more vocal about, is that finance and real estate interests have ruined the MTA (which operates as much as a private corporation as it does an arm of the state government), not worker pay or the costs of providing service. This has allowed the union to build new alliances with rider advocates and environmental groups, while using the contract battle to show how Wall Street bankrupts essential services will provide an opportunity for OWS to expand.
As Fine points out, beginning these relationships is the hard part. Unions have rigid leadership structures and bylaws and must comply with strict federal and local regulations, and the bigger ones work with high-priced lobbyists and media consultants. It is hard to fuse that with something as leaderless and nebulous as OWS, but there’s been marked progress, she said. And there is also a faction in any union that believes the business of the union is settling and administering contracts, and that any other endeavor is a just a waste of dues money.
In that regard, a better way to think about the role of unions in the Occupy Wall Street movement is to ask what OWS can offer the labor movement. Occupy Wall Street could inspire what remains of organized labor in this country to move away from just pushing specific employers for modest wage gains and start organizing working-class people in order to shape not just industry standards, but a new economic order, as its frustrated radical factions have dreamt about.
“The labor movement has conditioned itself to only think of itself in legal terms. ‘What does the NLRB [National Labor Relations Board] say about this or that?’” Fine said. “It has to get beyond that.”
To borrow a phrase from free market fans, OWS is about “creative destruction.” Old models for resisting corporate power have failed, and OWS is forming a new one. Maybe it is time for labor to shed its old skin and remake itself. Some of that is happening at Liberty Park when union members join the emerging movement., said OWS activist Harrison Magee. “They sort of drop that identity,” he said. “They become Occupy Wall Street and they become something new.”
Ari Paul has reported for The Nation, The American Prospect, Al Jazeera English and Free Speech Radio News.
Comments
OCCUPY AMERICA..and Everywhere's...in USA.: WE MUST WAKE UP AMERICA....OR ELSE..... Are we really afraid of being protectionists....or should we STOP IMPORTS....or slow it down.... or else we will loose everything we built after WWII....!!!
> WHY IS THERE AN OCCUPY OF AMERICA.....!!!
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> BECAUSE ALL OUR AMERICAN JOBS EVAPORATED AND WERE SENT TO ASIA THE LAST 45 YEARS....!!!
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>>> OCCUPY AMERICA....!!!
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>>>> Lets talk about Occupying America.... which I know best....!!!
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>>>> Let me know how I can help...I live near the Sherman Oaks in CA...I am 78 years old and don't do real big things anymore...but my old brain still wants to...like Occupy - Lake Balboa next...Long Beach and Los Angeles Ports etc....!!!
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>>>> There is a lot more about it.... as I have analyzed America for the last 62 years as an adult...I came to America in 1949 after WWII....and started to work in Manhattan in 1951 right after I graduated from High School...yes I always thought then that I had come to the land of Milk & Honey...or someone told me so....now it has turned to be more about Democrats, Republicans, Corporations and Government ...plus coffee drinking Tea Party folks....and Politics...!!!
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>>>> I gave up on America some time ago...!!! but still am hunging in...!!!
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>>>> Yes picketing Fashion Square in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles....should be next if you can get an Army to go there every day...covering all the entrance doors.......and explain with signs how Americans keep buying products made overseas and in the same breath eliminate American jobs by buying those products for the last 45 years............all of our malls around America should be prime targets for sure... as they all Import....and you need to picket our 2 ports where 13,000 Container ships unloaded in Long Beach port alone in 2010...and I'm not not even counting the Los Angeles port....and many more along our 3 coasts...around the USA...so we have been loosing jobs to Imports since the Mid 1960's...!!!! and nothing has been done about it...President Bush Jr signed & sealed our fate in 2006 with his NO QUOTA bill...the last Bill necessary that allowed Asia to dump goods at will beyong the means of our manufacturing base to recover........and made our Chain Stores and Mass Merchandisers & Importers that started and finally killed our American's Camel's Back Economy for good and a final blow during that 45 years lapse...........and it made these Special Interest businesses and Corporations and Wall Street and banks rich & fat...rich and non-caring about our American work force.........and now our Economy is lamenting every day...with no end in sight...!!!! and I am not surprised...!!!
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>>>> I have been urging DC to listen and do something about it for since January 21st 2009...on the first day my Candidate Obama said he would be ready on Day 1....no instead.... he traveled to 21 countries to show off and even got a Nobel Prize for Peace....which he did not deserve....as we should not have invaded Iraq in the first place...yes Bush Jr and Obama should divide their shallow accomplishments...and get nothing each...!!!!! not even an ice Cream cone...!!!!
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>>>> JK >:o
>>>> Meanwhile we should only focuss on one issue...Jobs & our Econmy...
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>>>> I wrote this last April....below....
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>>>> OCCUPY AMERICA..and Everywhere's...in USA.: WE MUST WAKE UP AMERICA....OR ELSE..... Are we really afraid of being protectionists....or should we STOP IMPORTS....or slow it down.... or else we will loose everything we built after WWII....!!!
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>>>>> WAKE UP AMERICA.... WE MUST.....WAKE UP OR THE FUTURE WILL NOT BE VERY ROSY THIS CENTURY.....!!!!!!
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>>>>> Or else we will loose everything we built up after WWII....
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>>>>> Are we really afraid of being protectionists....or should we STOP IMPORTS....or slow it down a lot so our decimated industries can get back in the game and compete against Asia and other foreign countries........
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>>>>> After 45 years of offering Exports to Asia it is no wonder we have no jobs at home in America......plus our richest companies now are Importers but do not have jobs for Americans at home...as we have finally hit the Wall...finally...I am not surprised as everything now is going up in price...it is called inflation for sure....that will be the final blow to America....
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>>>>> How about picketing all the US Malls who carry 95% of Imports like in my 2 industries....Manufacturers who are hanging on still and who are still in business but have been decimated or many others have gone out of business for the last 45 years because they could not compete with Foreign countries or American Importers either...........so "America" .... and at any store that sells Imports...Picket them...they will eventually get the message and sell American products eventually .......and say in your picket signs that WE WILL NOT BUY IMPORTS ANYMORE...and...SELL ONLY MADE IN THE USA PRODUCTS....those IMPORTS benefits all the Special Interest Folks who eliminated our Manufacturing bases over the last 45 years...with the help of our Government and with campaign financing which they offered to legislators to pass just the right bills for them in exchange........I have seen it happen with my own eyes....IMPORTS are our long lost jobs mostly transferred in Asia.....picketing with signs will raise the ears of those Buyers who put Imports in our Retail Stores and who sell them willingly to naive consumers......consumers who have zero ideas that they are eliminating American Jobs....so.....!!!!!!
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>>>>> Also wondering why we have a 2% of rich folks who have as much money as the rest of the 98%...IMPORTS are full of benefits and profits...that is why our Retailers don't buy American made products....as there less profits in buying or selling American products for sure....this issue Imports has contributed to our demise economically for a very long time....
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>>>>> Many of us are already Liberals....but Liberals & Conservatives and folks in the middle have all created this economic problem over the last 45 years........and it has not helped in this century or the last one to have 2 parties that can't work together in Washington or in our 50 States.........as they don't have common senses on how to fix America....how many times more am I going to vote out legislators and replace them with another while the problems get worse after I voted.......!!!!!
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>>>>> What do we have to be and do to overcome our present situation....???? START OVER...!!!
>>>>> Here is one of my ideas to fix our economy first and get our jobs back.......STOP IMPORTS...!!!...and stop trading Boeing Airplanes for Sweat shirts with China......it won't work well for us to Trade this stupid way........Imports are Imports that have eliminated our jobs sources at home....!!!!
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>>>>> And is becoming protectionist necessary.....!!! YES
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>>>>> And can we overcome the world order that we impose on many countries...!!! YES if we don't get involved unless someone attacks us....
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>>>>> And so on....and on.....and on.....!!!!
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>>>>> So... Stop Imports and slow down Asia or they will control all of our best markets....and Asia will have the jobs for their People and we won't....it's that simple.
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>>>>> Joel in LA 8-) at EMAIL: jasaguide@sbcglobal.net
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Great question: what does OWS have to offer unions? The answer: its practice of direct democracy, its "horizontality."
This practice of democracy matters because it maximizes participation, not as "foot soldiers" or "masses" but as organizers and individuals who are free to think, debate, organize, facilitate, etc.. NYC unions have not lacked progressive political positions or progressive leaders. What they lack is dedicated, active, empowered members. Why? One of the long-standing obstacles to this is the lack of union democracy, either active hostility to democracy on the part of the officers (Carpenters Union) or just institutional barriers to leadership (SEIU 32BJ). Picture the leadership of a major NYC union having to "get on stack." The contrast with the leaderless (leaderfull?) process at OWS is striking.
Building participation and cultivating initiative in a labor union is not easy, unions like TWU Local 100 are trying -- but at OWS unionists can learn principles and techniques of democratic organizing that unions sorely need. If they apply what they learn at Zucotti Park back at the union hall and on the job, OWS can really prove to be a gift to unionism.
I was at a labor event tonight where the president of a fairly large and powerful union local spoke who has been in office since 1979. His politics had a progressive accent but he's been in power longer than Mubarak. That can't be healthy.
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