By Frank Emspak

For those not familiar, the Princess and the Pea is a fable where a princess can’t sleep because of a pea under her mattress. Although it’s technically about someone finding true love because of their weird sleeping habits, it can also be interpreted as being about the fragile egos and impossible desires of the mega-rich.

My takeaway from this fable is that a little annoyance can go a long way. The tactic of using a small annoyance to build a popular campaign is part of a strategy to rebuild our unions. This tactic should contribute to building political support for the pending court cases aimed at undercutting Act 10. We can build support and membership for public sector unions who might undertakes this strategy and position unions as allies or advocates for groups, beyond the immediate focus of union organizing efforts.

In Wisconsin union density has dropped by about 50% compared with pre-Act 10. The biggest hit, of course, was the public sector. But “right to work”, attacks on Project Labor Agreements, and prevailing wage didn’t help. Nor has the loss of plants like GM in Janesville, Oscar Meyer, and Master Lock, as well as the continued migration of unionized financial services work out of the state and out of the union, as carried out by Tru-Stage.

However, this past year organized labor has moved from defense to offense, with some important organizing victories… and now with legal attacks on Act 10. In addition, a parallel judicial effort is underway to force a decision as to whether the Public Authority, the legal home for the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics, is a public entity subject to state laws or a private entity subject to the NLRB.

Both legal challenges seek to regain rights lost under Act 10. At the same time, efforts to organize on the ground continue.

Over the course of the 20th century, the legal framework tended to follow the actions on the ground. In the thirties, after the first national labor relations act was declared unconstitutional, a huge wave of organizing swept the country along with the expected repression and unrest. It was then that the courts reversed their view, and the NLRB was declared constitutional.

The Brown v Board of Education decision, ending de jure segregation, followed a similar path. By 1954, there had been almost 10 years of protests and increasing unrest, especially in the South. Legal segregation was an international embarrassment to the US, and so the US Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional.

Here in Wisconsin, prohibitions against public sector unions, especially teachers unions, ended after another record number of disruptions among public school teachers at the beginning of the fall school year. It is important to note that the new laws provided a means to allow state, county, and municipal governments to recognize a union. But in exchange, the union was required to follow a system of rules to be eligible to use those means. In both Federal and State labor law, the range of remedies permitted to unions under the new collective bargaining systems restricted their ability to use direct action: that is, strikes, secondary boycotts, or a closed shop. While the laws did compel an employer to bargain if the union followed the procedures laid out in the respective laws, nothing in either state or federal legislation compelled the employer to reach an agreement with the union.

Winning the Legal Battles

It is all of our interest to build a political and organizational environment to make it easy for the courts to ratify the situation on the ground.

While the courts do act independently, they are also attentive to public opinion, and they are especially attentive to managing unrest. I think it is fair to say that the chances of a favorable court ruling would be increased if University faculty and staff, as well as nurses, could convincingly show they had overwhelming support amongst their fellow workers. 

There may well be majority support for collective bargaining amongst nurses and other public sector workers. A large percentage of the public supports unions. But it is one thing to support collective bargaining in a poll, and another to participate in achieving it. As of yet, that last step has eluded us. Or to put it another way, there is every reason for an organizing committee to act like a union and mobilize around an issue in the workplace without waiting for the possibility that the legal situation will be clarified in labor’s favor. In fact, the achievement of a new collective bargaining law, or even the return to the status quo ante, does not guarantee progress. It guarantees a system of control. It guarantees a process. It may allow an increase in the financial stability of our unions, but given the undemocratic nature of the budget process in Wisconsin, the process cannot be counted on to provide the relief public sector workers need and deserve.

However, developing a majoritarian, on the ground, workplace-centered movement will achieve what we all need: strong democratic unions with workplace organizational strength. The existence of such a movement may help convince the judges to restore laws that provide labor rights, and procedures that make sense.

How can this be achieved? Demonstrating and demanding collective bargaining rights is certainly a first step, but it is only one aspect of the fight. Mobilizing the workforce on an issue of importance to themselves is another. Mobilizing in the workforce as part of a conscious campaign to show what a collective of workers can do can be key to the achievement of any legal victory.

What might a workplace issue look like? It would need to be something that is important to the workforce. It would need to be measurable. It would need to winnable: that is, an issue that the employer could agree to, without the need to go to the legislature for money or permission. Workers could be asked to support this union-driven campaign without necessarily joining the union, but there would be no question in anyone’s mind that the campaign was a union initiative, aimed at improving or remedying an important problem.

What type of issue do we have in mind? Here’s an example which would apply to medical personnel at all levels, but also to the thousands of academic staff and technicians employed by the UW and other public agencies: the “right to know”. (Remember, this is just an example. Depending on the workplace, workers in any particular place may decide on another issue). The “right to know” means that anyone exposed to any chemicals, drugs, solvents, insecticides, pesticides, or other potentially carcinogenic substances would have the right to know that they had been exposed; when, to what, and the relevant scientific information with respect to potential health hazards. Management would be responsible for making this information available in some comprehensible format. This makes common sense. It is something that could be achieved, if the employer wished. It is needed. It is the type of campaign that demonstrates to all, even those of our fellow workers who are undecided about the union, what the union can do to improve working conditions.

A serious campaign of this nature would also demonstrate to the courts that without a union the employer did little or nothing. Hence the issue of collective bargaining is not some theoretical legal issue or abstract right, but a potential lifesaving matter for workers.

A campaign like this would show that collective action—the essence of unionism—makes sense. As such, the union organizing campaigns presently underway would have a specific, meaningful activity to show non-members why it is important to join the union: not only because they will gain rights which may pay off in the future, but because they will exercise collective rights they have here and now, and help pave the way for a better future. If, for some reason, the court cases are not definitive, a campaign such as the one described will have given the unions and workers involved the experience of a successful collective action, and thus grow their capacity to effectively mobilize on other issues.

Frank Emspak

Professor Emeritus, School for Workers, University of Wisconsin

Enjoy your December National Political Committee (NPC) newsletter! Our NPC is an elected 18-person body (including two YDSA members who share a vote) which functions as the board of directors of DSA. This month, the year in DSA, Palestine solidarity actions during the Congressional recess, free resources for DSA members, and more!

And to make sure you get our newsletters in your inbox, sign up here! Each one features action alerts, upcoming events, political education, and more.

• From the National Political Committee — Solidarity Brings Us Closer
• Get Your Union-Printed Bandana by 12/31! And Sign Up for a Solidarity Dues Phonebank
• Applications for the 2024 YDSA Conference are Open! Apply ASAP
• Limited Spots Open on Budget and Finance Committee — Application Deadline Tuesday 1/2
• Welcome New National Electoral Commission Leadership!
• DSA Members — Get a Free Subscription to In These Times Magazine!

From the National Political Committee — Solidarity Brings Us Closer

As the year draws to a close, we’re naturally looking back at the incredible things DSA has accomplished in 2023. But in a year like this one, where we’re at the end of a few months’ worth of weeks that feel like decades, it’s hard to see past the massive task in front of us: stopping the genocide in Gaza and fighting for a free Palestine. 

That work cannot and will not stop. DSA members are continuing to rally, march, and organize creative actions with masses of people turning out in communities all over the country. DSA electeds in office have been bravely speaking up against censure, organizing local resolutions, standing with protesters in legislatures, hunger striking, naming names, and disrupting the holiday parties of those in the ruling class who are enabling Israel’s atrocities. Earlier this month at a labor solidarity rally organized with DSA at the White House, United Auto Workers joined the call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza — the largest union to do so yet, and a major breakthrough for building a working-class foreign policy in the United States.

We have our final No Money For Massacres phonebank of the year tomorrow night, Thursday 12/21, and we’ll be picking them back up on January 4, 2024 — sign up and join us to make these important phone calls and throw your weight behind demanding a Ceasefire NOW! And as of today (December 20, 2023), both the House and the Senate have adjourned for the holidays, which means Representatives and Senators are all heading home to their districts. This time of year is a favorite for in-district fundraisers, meet-and-greets, and photo ops, so you can expect your electeds to be out in the community early and often — which gives you and your DSA chapter an ideal opportunity to reach them directly to talk about the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Check out our quick guide to organizing Palestine solidarity actions through this Congressional recess!

Even with this monumental task at the forefront of so many of our minds, we deserve to spend a few minutes reflecting on some of the wins, big and small, that DSA has fought to achieve over the past year. Our collective efforts are making a difference in the lives of working people everywhere, and that is cause for celebration. We encourage you to spend some time reminiscing about some of your local wins with your chapter comrades; it’s a valuable task that builds solidarity and steels us for the big fights ahead. The NPC and DSA staff did a bit of this ourselves and here are just a few of the many things that popped up:

• We held the first in-person DSA Convention since COVID started. We met in Chicago in August to engage in robust and comradely debate and organization-building with over 1200 of our closest comrades, charting the path forward for the next two years.
• DSA chapters across New York state built and led a coalition to pass the Build Public Renewables Act (BPRA), the largest, most aggressive, and most comprehensive piece of Green New Deal legislation we’ve seen anywhere in the country.
• Our Strike Ready Campaign trained over 250 Solidarity Captains to lead Strike Ready work in their chapters, initially leading up to the possible Teamsters strike and providing further support to the UAW Big Three strikes. This connected the work of on-the-ground union solidarity and relationship-building through a national network that kept us at the forefront of this crucial work.
• Ohio chapters worked together in every corner of the state to protect the right to abortion with an amendment to the state constitution. While rights are being restricted in many places, these comrades fought like hell and actually saw abortion rights expanded.
• Over 1200 of your fellow DSA members helped ensure that our organization has a durable funding source for the work we want to do by switching to Solidarity Dues and working to turn out their comrades to do the same. Have you made the switch yet?

The incredible thing is that these are just a few of the victories. Our 69% win rate for nationally  endorsed campaigns on election night means that new ballot measures and freshly elected politicians will be coming into place as we roll into the New Year, setting us up for significant growth as we show an alternative way forward in a system that can otherwise seem hopeless.

We encourage you to lean into that hope as the calendar changes over. A better world is possible and the solidarity that we’re building is bringing us ever closer. A very happy holiday season to all of you; we wish you plenty of good rest, good cheer, and solidarity forever!

Get Your Union-Printed Bandana by 12/31! And Sign Up for a Solidarity Dues Phonebank

As a member-funded organization, having the resources to keep building working-class power in 2024 is up to us. That’s why over one thousand DSA members have committed to giving their 1% for the 99% by switching to Solidarity Dues. If you haven’t made the switch yet, sign up by Sunday 12/31 and get a union-printed Solidarity Dues Bandana!

Already made the switch and ready to ask your comrades to do the same? Sign up for a Solidarity Dues phonebank and bring your chapter to an upcoming training this January. Onward, together!

Applications for the 2024 YDSA Conference are Open! Apply ASAP

Applications are open for college or high school-aged socialists to attend the 2024 YDSA Conference in Atlanta the weekend of March 1-3, 2024. Join YDSA to learn about how young socialists around the country are fighting for and winning trans liberation, reproductive justice, a stronger labor movement, and more. Learn more and find the application here! Slots are filling up, so apply ASAP. 

Limited Spots Open on Budget and Finance Committee — Application Deadline Tuesday 1/2

Applications for very limited slots for people with directly applicable financial skills are open for the national Budget and Finance Committee. If you have both directly applicable fiscal skills and experience and the ability to attend all meetings, consider applying to assist with the ongoing budget process for the upcoming fiscal year, as well as the process for next year. The application deadline is Tuesday 1/2, and the application form is here.

Welcome New National Electoral Commission Leadership!

Congratulations to the National Electoral Commission’s (NEC) incoming steering committee! Our newly elected leaders are Skye O’Toole, Katie Sims, Nick Conder, Tzara Kane, Sam Rosenthal, Irene Koo, David Vibert, Ben Lenz, Grace Mausser, Robert Nichols, Derek Tulowitzky, Chanpreet Singh, and Wamiq Chowdhury. Huge thanks from the outgoing NEC to everyone who participated in the election — a critical kickoff of our transformation from a national committee to a national commission. Stay tuned to learn how members across DSA can get involved in 2024!

DSA Members — Get a Free Subscription to In These Times Magazine!

As we wrap up 2023 and go into the New Year, left magazine In These Times is offering a free subscription to DSA members! Click here to sign up. And enjoy your reading!

The post Wins in Hard Times — Your National Political Committee newsletter appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

The holiday season is in full swing, and as some people head toward time off and relaxation, workers in many industries are facing their busiest time of year. We are joined live by Connor Spence, a worker-organizer at Amazon’s first union distribution facility, JFK8 on Staten Island. Connor discusses his work as a co-founder of both the Amazon Labor Union and the ALU Democratic Reform Caucus, and how Amazon workers organized and won new leadership elections in their union.  Now they'll be upping the pressure on this mega corporation to bargain a first contract with workers at JFK8. We also talk about Amazon Labor Union’s recent organizing around Palestine solidarity and the movement to stop the US-Israeli war machine from the bottom up.

 

Connor was recently illegally terminated by Amazon for his organizing activity. Read more and donate to the solidarity fund: https://www.gofundme.com/f/connor-spenceillegally-fired-alucaucus-organizer

 

Learn more about Amazon Labor Union: https://sol.alu.network/

 

Follow the ALU Democratic Reform Caucus at @ReformALU. 

It’s been quite a year for the fledgling (founded in early 2022) California DSA. That’s because it’s been quite a year for the multiracial working class, which has supported a flood of successful union contract campaigns, largely due to a spectacular wave of powerful strikes, alongside a brand-new anti-war movement representing a cross-section of the left. California DSA members have been involved with all these activities and more—and California Red, your bimonthly socialist newsletter, launched on Mayday of this year, has been covering as much of them as we can.

The Events

Although 2023 is technically the year we speak of, it began thematically with the emblematic UC academic worker strike in late 2022.  More California DSA members participated directly in this strike than any in history (admittedly the history of California DSA only goes back to February of 2022, but still.) We don’t have a precise count. Nonetheless it’s safe to say hundreds of DSA members took part, including the president of UAW 2865. And the strike, with 48,000 workers walking the lines, was the biggest in academic labor history, and so successful that it inspired a spate of copycat strikes around the country.

It didn’t take long for the next big one: SEIU 99, representing classified workers in Los Angeles Unified School District, struck for three days in March, winning a 30% raise for the lowest paid workers. The secret ingredient to the union’s success? Full on solidarity from United Teachers Los Angeles, who left their classrooms to honor the picket lines of their support workers. The enormous numbers in the streets and popular support from parents and students demonstrated to a chastised administration that it would be best to settle with UTLA as well, which, without the need for its own walkout, negotiated a strong contract on the basis of its obvious ability to mobilize its members. Dozens of dual DSA/UTLA members played a strong role in the actions leading up to the contract settlement.

Soon enough these public sector unions were followed by their siblings in private industry. As a third of a million UPS workers represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters across the country prepared to hit the bricks, with demonstrations and “practice strikes” following a 97% strike vote, DSA chapters sent members to join them via a Strike Ready campaign. As with UTLA, UPS workers didn’t have to strike due to their evident readiness to do it. At the last minute of an extension on the first strike deadline the union and corporation reached a deal. Despite arguments over whether UPS workers could have gotten an even better contract if they had struck, everyone agreed that the contract was the best since the 1997 strike, bringing up the least paid workers and gaining important health and safety improvements.

In Hollywood, the Writers Guild of America and SAG/AFTRA, representing 175,000 writers and actors, did have to strike against the arrogant movie studio bosses, and these were long ones, with WGA out on the lines for 148 days and the actors for 118. Determined to gain pioneering protections against potential damage to their livelihoods from advancing artificial intelligence, and make up for years of inflation eroding wages, movie workers received unprecedented solidarity as they outlasted the wealthy and powerful movie studios. Dual DSA-LA/UTLA members helped to organize a big turnout of UTLA to the WGA lines in June, and the LA chapter, with its innovative “Snacklist” deliveries, raised $87,000 worth of food by the end of September, earning a shoutout in WGA publications. And movie workers returned to the sets with strong wage gains and a solid foot in the door on AI.

Overlapping with the Hollywood strikes were rolling strikes by hotel, restaurant and casino workers in UNITE HERE-represented workplaces in LA, Las Vegas and Detroit. The largest health care worker strike ever erupted in October for three days with 75,000 members of a Kaiser union coalition in four states walking out.  

The big enchilada

But the big enchilada was the United Auto Workers “Standup” strike starting September 15 against the Big 3 carmakers in the union’s traditional jurisdiction. Shawn Fain, elected in spring with a rank-and-file caucus majority to control the international executive board, had promised that these negotiations would be different, and he was as good as his word. Replacing the traditional class collaborationist approach of his corrupt predecessors with a sharply militant rhetoric and actions to match, he headed up an innovative strategy of striking selected factories owned by all three automakers at once. 

Sitting at three negotiations tables, the union punished the companies when bargaining progress stalled by striking additional workplaces; when the companies were demonstrating good faith, no more factories were struck—until progress slowed and more facilities were called out. The picket lines were solid; once more DSA members showed up wherever they could. In California that meant parts suppliers in Ontario and Rancho Cucamonga, where picketers withstood private goon squads, attempts to ram them with cars, and in one instance, a drawn gun.

Following the pattern of other unions’ settlements during the year, when negotiations were concluded at the end of October after the union’s longest strike in a quarter century, auto workers had achieved their best results in decades: a 25% salary increase over the life of the contract (and more for the lowest paid categories of workers), bolstered retirement benefits, and the right to strike over plant closures, among other advances.

More strikes and heightened class consciousness

Over half a million workers have been out on picket lines in 2023. The strike wave shows no sign of abating, with the California Faculty Association, representing full- and part-time professors in the 23-campus California State University system, and IBT, with blue collar workers, shutting down four campuses this month and threatening to shutter more if the administration doesn’t address issues of low pay, two tier salary schedules, and inadequate staffing.

The actions of 2023 have featured heightened solidarity and a new level of class conscious rhetoric out of the mouths of leadership. While top AFL-CIO officers continue, alongside most Democratic politicians, to refer to union members as the aspirational “middle class” of America, leaders of the striking unions have moved on to a more precise vocabulary, and their public pronouncements reflect that understanding. After four decades of neoliberal attacks on wages, unions, government, taxes and regulation of corporations, large sectors of the working class have gained an insight: only their own collective action can reverse the tide.

Shawn Fain exhorted his members to make the connection directly, saying “Let’s stand up for ourselves and for the working class.” Taking a page out of Bernie Sanders’s book, he told the media that billionaires have no right to exist. Teamster leader Sean O’Brien, elected with the support of Teamsters for a Democratic Union, warned during bargaining, “The longer this contract negotiation goes on, the longer Wall Street is going to be affected. And that’s OK, just as long as Main Street gets taken care of at the end of the day.”

Fran Drescher, president of SAG-AFTRA, dispensed with euphemism, telling an interviewer: “I am anti-capitalist”. She also said, “I cannot believe it, quite frankly, how far apart we are on so many things. How they plead poverty, that they’re losing money left and right when giving hundreds of millions of dollars to their CEOs. It is disgusting. Shame on them. They stand on the wrong side of history.”

Where does it go from here?

Since October, alongside the upsurge in labor, a massive anti-war movement has arisen opposing US support for Israeli carpet bombing of Gaza. Large contingents of DSA members have been present at the rallies and marches in California and across the country. Despite national AFL-CIO admonitions for local labor councils to stay out of foreign affairs-related issues, a nascent “Labor4Palestine” effort, also featuring strong DSA involvement, represents a potential further expansion of union political consciousness. 

The UAW became the largest national union calling for a permanent ceasefire earlier this month, joining the United Electrical Workers, the Painters, and the American Postal Workers, as well as a growing number of local unions.

No one can predict where things are going; few crystal balls function perfectly in the class struggle. But as Rosa Luxemburg noted in her classic The Mass Strike, political consciousness often lags behind economic consciousness of workers involved in mass actions. Until it doesn’t, when it can take a leap not readily foreseen the previous day.

This question might be posed sharply next year in election season.  Currently many young people involved in the Free Palestine struggle are justifiably angry with Joe Biden for continuing to support the US’s massive shipments of arms to Israel; they hold signs at rallies and marches to “dis-elect Biden” and vow to sit out the coming presidential election. On the other hand, if Biden runs (and he shows no sign of not running) and loses, fascism looms. Here we find a contradiction yet to be worked out. 

It is the role of socialists, historically and in the present, to help move things to the left within the labor movement. That means militant action, but it also means politics. DSA has shown in the past year its staunch solidarity with the working class in motion. To take things to another level—to build on workplace power as a platform for advancing the political conversation—is not the sole responsibility of DSA. But unless we desire to wake up in November 2024 in a police state, it is necessary to be part of that conversation. 

Back to all news

DSA is honored to join St. Louis DSA in re-endorsing Cori Bush for the U.S. House of Representatives, Missouri District 1. Cori has been an exemplar of democratic socialist politics since elected in 2020, and unwavering in her solidarity with the working class.

This year, Cori made history by naming the suffering and injustice borne by Palestinians when few of her colleagues dared, and authored a resolution for a ceasefire in the earliest weeks of Israel’s bombing. DSA has been fighting with Cori and co-sponsors of her resolution ever since. Hundreds of DSA members have made hundreds of thousands of calls to urge support for a ceasefire. We will keep calling. We will fight, no matter how many nasty names Congress calls us.

Cori’s campaign faces formidable challenges as a direct result of her integrity. AIPAC is targeting her next year, along with other democratic socialists in office. Get involved in the NEC’s work nationally or support St. Louis DSA locally to send Cori back to D.C. for another term.

We have the power to protest for peace and fight for a better world when we lift each other up.

The post The power is in our hands appeared first on EWOC.

DSA proudly joins DSA San Francisco in re-endorsing Dean Preston for San Francisco Supervisor, District 5. Dean has drawn the ire of some of the world’s wealthiest interests through his unflagging pursuit of greater equity in the region and checks against police power. It’s on democratic socialists and our allies to send him back for another term. Check out ways to get involved with the NEC nationally or connect with DSA San Francisco to learn how to support Dean in 2024.

DSA and Milwaukee DSA announce endorsement of Alex Kostal for Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors, District 3. Through DSA, Milwaukee has reignited a luminous history of socialists in office – let’s keep the momentum going.

DSA joins Silicon Valley DSA in endorsing Sally Lieber for Santa Clara Board of Supervisors, District 5. Sally brings experience and resolve in her commitment to advance DSA’s platform in Silicon Valley, where workers struggle for power and tenants face sky-high rents.

“Basically, we looked at each other and agreed, either we all have to quit or something has to change!”

The post Hex Workers United: A Profile in Grassroots Organizing appeared first on EWOC.