Photo credit: Ian Castro

The historic strike of 48,000 academic workers across the ten campuses of the University of California and the Lawrence-Berkeley National Laboratory came to a close on December 23, when the two remaining bargaining units of the United Auto Workers – UAW Local 2865 and SRU-UAW – voted to ratify new contracts. That ratification vote ended one chapter in the long struggle of academic workers for union recognition, fair working conditions and a public education system that elevates the public good over private profit. 

Striking workers and their supporters utilized a range of tactics during the six-week work stoppage, from pickets, rallies and marches to building occupations and actions against individual Chancellors and Regents. Among the tactics that, many believe, put the greatest pressure on the University were pickets at loading docks. Strong contingents of strikers at several campuses picketed deliveries. At UC Berkeley these pickets, organized by rank-and-file strikers, became known as “gas pickets” due to their focus on stopping the delivery of gasses and other essential research supplies on which labs commonly depend. The result was to spread the work stoppage by slowing the progress of labs that attempted to function during the strike. 

These loading-dock pickets operated not by blockade, but by the power of solidarity. Picketers informed drivers of the nature of the strike, and requested that they honor the picket line. Many drivers – including both UPS Teamsters and non-union delivery drivers – complied. 

As academic workers reflect on their experiences, they are not only concluding that they came out of this strike stronger than they went in, but are also envisioning the next chapter in their struggle – and its connection with the broader struggles of the multiracial working class. Here, we present the reflections of one group of strikers on the lessons that emerged from the gas pickets. – The Editors

We want to take a moment to reflect on the last several weeks and on the path forward. We are fighting for contracts that make academic work accessible to all regardless of socioeconomic background, access-needs, residential status, or status as parents or caretakers. Though the gains in our newly ratified contracts are not insignificant, we have not yet achieved this goal. Regardless of whether we could have achieved more in our recent negotiations, overhauling a system that was not built to include many of our workers will take long-term and resolute persistence in the face of formidable challenges. 

We believe that the power of our strike was not discrete nor pre-determined but rather a dynamic function of our sustained individual and collective actions. No single one of us had the power to make the University concede to the demands of our union but each of us made our strike more powerful when we came together. We believe that the leverage our bargaining teams had at their disposal was primarily determined not by the size of the picket lines, but by the collective stoppage of our work and the immense amount of organizing that went into supporting members of our union in continuing to do so, through infrastructure set up by both union leadership and by rank-and-file members. Even when the University feigned normality and SRU-UAW and UAW 2865 leadership told us that our power was waning, so many of us responded not by declaring defeat, but by continuing to organize even harder to grow the power of our strike. This alone is an act of courage, an empowered recognition of our value to the University and affirmation that we can fight for what we deserve. 

Our gas and delivery pickets were organized not through a directive, but through the desire to put pressure on the University of California even beyond the stoppage of our own work. These efforts emerged organically from our involvement in similar efforts to shut down construction work and garbage pickup which were fruitful but ultimately limited by legal technicalities and by severe no-strike clauses to which the University binds its workers. As we are researchers who work in many of the buildings we picketed, we know all too well what slows research operations; in non-strike times, we are the ones eagerly awaiting packages and calling gas and cryogen companies to accelerate the deliveries and the speed of our research, the research that the University of California proudly publicizes and profits from. 

While at present we do not have the opportunity to continue to grow our strike to win more of the demands that our workers acutely need, we are very proud of the momentum that we have all built together through stopping our research and teaching and through our disruptive picket lines. Although thorough quantification of our impacts remains an effort in progress, in addition to countless anecdotes of significant threats of and actualized disruption to research and university operations, we have several concrete indications: 

• Thanks to the solidarity of the Teamsters Joint Councils 7 & 42 issuing a sanction so that members could honor our picket lines, few UPS deliveries occurred over the course of our six week strike. According to a UPS driver we spoke to, local UPS warehouses accumulated 35,000 packages that they have been unable to deliver to our campus. 
• On 12/21 UC Berkeley described their efforts to surmount our picket lines, and the impact of Teamsters not coming to campus at all, as triaging deliveries. 
• In terms of general research stoppage, a UC Berkeley HazMat employee recently told us that hazardous waste production was reduced by half during the strike.
• Tens of thousands of grades were withheld across the UC system, and at UCSD quantified to 23% of fall quarter grades 

Beyond direct impacts on the university, our picket lines were a place where we built solidarity and community. Workers from distant departments across campus stood together for hours, sometimes in the dark, cold, and rain to fight for our shared goals. We discussed bargaining and newly pertinent legal concepts, learned about the ways proposals would affect other workers in our union, creatively crafted chants, and respectfully challenged each other’s ideas. We benefited immensely from the solidarity of workers in other unions who expressed support and in many cases made monetary sacrifices or risked discipline or dismissal to refuse to cross our picket lines. We got a unique view of day-to-day University operations and the essential work that AFSCME 3299 members do on our campus every single day. We appreciate the unwavering support of DSA members, undergraduate students, and other community members who joined us on the line, shared wisdom, picked up slack when our members needed a break, and made sure we never went hungry or without caffeine. Our pickets at the loading dock became a praxis of our solidarity, bringing us together with all who share our struggles. 

So where do we go from here? What do we do with our grassroots energy and new reflexive reactions to seeing trucks on the horizon? It may take some time to get over the latter, so let each truck be a reminder of the solidarity we cultivated and received and of the fights we, as workers, have left to win. Contract ratification does not mean the end of our fight, only that it will look a little different now. Returning to our individual work does not preclude the longevity of our collective action. 

Just as we were supported by so many workers, we too can support workers in other trades in their own struggles to fight the boss, whether physically on local picket lines or from a distance. Workers in our own community are on strike or will be on strike in the near future; nurses at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center are on strike until January 2, 2023. The teachers union, Oakland Education Association, is in the midst of contract negotiations and the United Teachers of Richmond voted to authorize a strike just last week. The Teamsters, our staunchest supporters, have a national contract with UPS that expires on August 1. These are opportunities to pay back the solidarity that our community has shown us, and to prove to them that our union fights for all workers, and not just for our own self interests. Furthermore, each and every one of us has lived experience that is extremely valuable for other academic workers going on strike. We are in the process of compiling the resources that we have developed over the last six weeks and documenting them so other academic workers can hit the ground running with disruptive pickets from the very first day of their strike. In addition to these more procedural documents, we would like to collect advice for future academic workers on strike from anyone willing to contribute. 

Lastly, though very importantly, we hope that all of you who spent the last six weeks fighting for a contract that would be transformative for all of our workers, and are in a position to do so, keep fighting both within and alongside the existing local UAW organization. We recognize that our union has failed to negotiate contracts that allow all of us to persist as graduate workers at all and to continue this fight. For those of us with more privilege, it may be tempting to give up and return to our siloed ivory tower labs and offices where we can better control our individual progress. But this is OUR union and OUR university and we must instead look forward to forging a more democratic union that fights for all of our workers, including those most precarious and those that cannot yet afford to work within this system at all. To achieve this, we need the active members of our union to be people as dedicated as all of you, who are willing to make sacrifices for each other, who read and listen to all — with critical eyes and ears and through the lens of strong principles. 

Through our grassroots efforts and those of other rank-and-file members, we have seen firsthand the power that each of us has to make things happen without waiting for directions or approval from a higher authority. The bold vision for our fight– to bring all of our workers out of the rent burden and make academia more equitable and just– was shaped by rank-and-file members. It was the principled fortitude of the rank and file that pushed our bargaining team to not settle for UC’s 12/2 offer and continue bargaining for a contract that brings us closer to what we deserve. The strength of any union, and especially our union, lies in the breadth and depth of engagement of its members. This strike and contract ratification vote represents an unprecedented volume of participation by the members of our union. Let us not take for granted that seven thousand of our colleagues believed in our collective power to keep fighting for a contract that serves all of us. 

It is difficult to find words to describe all that was our gas picket, but in this moment of history, we get to share these spots of time. We feel so grateful to have stood alongside you all over the last several weeks and want you to know that we continue to stand with you, even if not physically. We hope everyone takes time to rest and care for themselves and each other. 

Wishing you a restful holiday and an empowered new year. 

In solidarity, 

UC Berkeley ‘gas picket’ organizers

Wheareas,

1. The labor movement has long been recognized as the most important engine for socialist change in society due to its power to halt the flow of goods and services the capitalist class depends on.
2. Socialists recognize that the right to strike or threat thereof is the primary and most powerful instrument of the labor movement and should never be surrendered under any circumstances.
3. Railroad workers have been working under inhumane Dickensian conditions where their employers will not grant them even a single sick day during a pandemic in order to disgustingly benefit themselves by extracting larger profits from their labor.
4. A central demand of the rail worker’s unions has been to be granted a reasonable period of sick leave.
5. Rail workers died at more than twice the rate of other workers from Jan. 2020 to May 2022 and more than three times other workers in 2021 according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s MMWR.
6. The United States shifted to a service economy model, which reduced reliance on domestic production for the stuff of everyday life. This reduced the power of domestic factory workers, but wildly enhanced the potential power of logistics workers in airline, shipping, trucking, and rail industries that are situated between a global production system and a domestic consumption system.
7. Threatened by this potential halt to critical infrastructure, the capitalist government is attempting to declare the strike illegal via the passage of legislation. This in effect would make railroad workers involuntary labor, banned under the 13th amendment (except for its racist loophole for people convicted of a crime). Presumably, such a law will be eventually backed with force of arms if workers disobey.
8. DSA National put out a statement calling for a NO vote on H.J. 100 at 10:41am, about two hours before roll call at 1:02pm. While not ideal, this is sufficient time for DSA federal representatives to be made aware of it.
9. Three DSA elected officials, Reps. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortes (AOC), Jamaal Bowman, and Cori Bush voted for a bill that would make the railroad strike illegal. We applaud the fact that Rep. Rashida Tlaib did vote no.
10. AOC tweeted that the union asked her to vote this way to protect a sick days amendment that would obviously die in the Senate (and did).
11. The DSA has long had issues with our federal elected officials deviating from our political platform.
12. We must call our representatives to explain themselves to the DSA National Political Committee. While we are encouraged by DSA National releasing a statement that denounces the vote to break the strike and which calls for a town hall to discuss this, this statement does not meet all of our demands, which include a meeting with the wayward electeds to demand an explanation.
13. It is critical that DSA state in the clearest terms that we did not endorse H.J. 100 and do endorse workers’ right to strike. To do otherwise will perhaps irreparably damage our ability to support striking workers. Why would they trust an organization whose representatives actively attacked them from the heights of federal power?

Therefore be it resolved,

1. Central Jersey DSA endorses the “Railroad Workers United Open Letter to Congress and the President”.
2. Central Jersey DSA endorses the letter authored by Seattle DSA Local Council “3 DSA Members in Congress Vote to Ban Railroad Strike — They Don’t Speak For Us”.
3. If a railroad strike actually develops, Central Jersey DSA will do its part to support the strike.
4. Central Jersey DSA will publish this resolution on social media to educate our constituency and the broader public on our position.

The strikewave within higher education came ashore in New York last month, as more than 1600 part-time faculty members at The New School, represented by ACT-UAW Local 7902, went on strike, hitting the picket line for higher pay, benefits, and greater security for their work. After a 25-day long strike in what some have called the longest strike by adjuncts in US history and a brutal battle with New School management, the university and the union reached a tentative agreement on December 10th, which included a number of key wins for the striking faculty. Tonight, we will hear from Annie Levin, an ACT-UAW staff organizer and political writer, and Brian Allen, also an organizer for ACT-UAW and formerly a member of Teamster Local 528, to tell us more about this historic strike at the New School, and how adjunct faculty won their new contract. We will also cut to a brief interview with Bucky, a student at the New School, and hear how they and their fellow classmates occupied a university building in support of their striking faculty and their thoughts on what can be done to build a better & democratic academy. 

By Rick Feinberg 

It was right before Christmas all over the state, But down in the city, they just couldn’t wait. 

The sacks and the cartons were scattered around, Awaiting the presents that soon would abound. 

The mommies and daddies, the girls and the boys Were gathered together and thinking of ploys 

To entice all the elves and the man with the sleigh To slide down their chimneys before the next day. 

But they had lots of reason for worry that night For all of the reindeer had gone out on strike. 

Santa called Avis and Hertz Rent-A-Car 

But they said, “Closed for Christmas; you’re not getting far!” 

The gears were a mess on his eighteen-speed bike, And his bunions were hurting too much for a hike. 

So he saddled his moose and he rode it to town With his satchel of goodies and jacket of down. 

Then from deep in the city arose a great noise 

As they hatched a great plan to deliver the toys. 

They’d send letters to Santa and picket his place. Show him posters and signs, and a pie in the face. 

They would withhold their coffee and cookies and shots Until he came through with the gifts for their tots. 

Then they shouted in unison never to fear, 

And they struck in support of Herr Claus’s reindeer. 

When Santa saw how they were closing the ranks, He knew he could not get away with his pranks. 

So he turned to old Dasher and Dancer, et al. 

Saying, “Don’t let my empire crumble and fall.”

I will meet your demands. I will charter a plane, And I’ll make you all partners in my Christmas game 

If you’ll help me deliver the presents tonight 

To the folks of the city, so plastered and tight. 

At that all the people applauded and clapped 

For they know that their presents could soon be unwrapped. 

And they shouted and cheered and their smiles were all bright. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

The Georgia runoff election is an important window into the political trends of both Georgia and the country at large. Although the individual characters of Herschel Walker and Raphael Warnock are important, it is equally important to understand the larger movements at play, in order to inform a political strategy that advances the interests of the working class. 

Raphael Warnock is not a socialist. His voting pattern has been squarely in line with the record of Democratic Party leadership, although he has taken notably progressive stances on specific votes such as student loan forgiveness. However, it is significant that the Republican Party did its best to portray him as the imagined radical socialist of which they caricature even the most milquetoast Democrats. This strategy ultimately failed.

The obvious answer for why lies in his opponent. Herschel Walker, with his record as a multi-millionaire scammer, domestic abuser, and reactionary extremist, proved repulsive to enough Georgia voters that fear of “socialism” was insufficient for him to win. However, Walker’s actual policies fall squarely in line with the core of the Republican Party, and his nomination as the GOP Senate candidate was virtually uncontested among Georgia Republicans. 

The truth about American politics, that is rarely discussed directly in the press, is that the vast majority of the electorate’s votes can be predicted before any counting begins. While there are variations between individual voting habits, there are certain trends that are impossible to ignore. The vast majority of black voters, especially working class black voters, vote Democratic. Likewise, the vast majority of rural, evangelical Christian white voters, will vote Republican. Similar tendencies are visible in trends of college-educated white voters in dense, urban districts; older, white non-college-educated men; etc. Altogether, the number of “swing” voters is relatively small, even though they are the disproportionate focus of political ads, network television focus groups, and newspaper editorials.

Despite these polarizations, there are elements of the elections that are difficult to predict in advance. Why was Warnock able to win, when Barack Obama, an equally charismatic candidate, decisively lost to weak Republican opponents twice? To answer this question, we must pay attention to the changes in the margins, particularly in the shifts in demographics in Georgia, and the shifts in party coalitions.

There are three key observations from the runoff results that indicate far more at play than the candidates as individuals.

1. Racial Polarization

The racial polarization of Georgia’s rural working class remains a strong force. Nonwhite working class voters have  historically been a core constituency of the Democratic Party, but starting with Donald Trump’s reelection attempt in 2020, Republicans have seen surprising gains with Hispanic and Asian voters, with varying degrees in different regions around the country. Republican strategists cynically hoped that Walker’s candidacy would expand these trends to the black vote.

Looking at December’s results, however, there was no indication that the Republicans gained ground with rural black voters, with Warnock flipping the predominantly black rural areas of Washington County and Baldwin County from the November election. Conversely, while Warnock improved his margins in the predominantly white industrial regions of Glynn County and Lowndes county, they still voted overwhelmingly Republican. This polarization of the working class remains a long-term barrier for building a robust political movement against the capitalist class. Georgia, and much of the deep south, are right-to-work states in large part because of racist propaganda in the postwar period.

2. Changing Suburbs

The Atlanta suburbs have increasingly become home to black and Hispanic workers, which provided the margins needed for Joe Biden, Jon Ossoff, and Raphael Warnock to win their seats. Once strongly Republican upper-middle-class strongholds, these counties’ demographics have massively changed  due to working-class black and Hispanic people moving away from the city core and rural areas and into the more affordable suburbs.

Share of Votes for Democratic Candidates by County

These regions have also been the notable sites of militant labor struggles, including the locations of the John Deere and Nabisco strikes last year. A critical test in the coming years will be whether the Democratic leaders can respond adequately to the labor movement that has contributed so much to their victories. Unfortunately, their recent betrayal of rail workers is a worrying sign in this regard.

3. Abortion Rights

The right to abortion is a critical issue facing the working class, and it was a major factor in this year’s elections. Although Hershel Walker has shown unique hypocrisy in his record of funding abortions, his platform on abortion rights is in no way unique for Republicans. The Republican leadership, and the overwhelming majority of their politicians, are extremists who wish to end the right to bodily autonomy. Although Georgia lacks ballot initiatives, anti-abortion referendums have resoundingly failed even in deeply conservative states such as Kansas and Kentucky. The election results and exit polls show that the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v Wade was a major motivation for working-class people to cast their vote against Republicans.

Tasks for Socialists

While Warnock’s victory represents a defeat of the reactionary right, socialists cannot rely on politicians to protect the working class out of some inherent generosity. It is necessary to organize from below and force elected officials, even ostensible “progressives” to fulfill their mandate. 

With the Democrats now having 51* votes in the Senate, there is no excuse for their failure to codify Roe vs Wade, pass the PRO Act and fully fund the NLRB. Such actions are the bare minimum needed to address the needs of workers and unions that have provided countless funds and people power for Democratic campaigns, particularly in Georgia. 

Ultimately, we need representatives at all levels of government who are accountable to the working class, rather than the Democratic establishment and the billionaire class. Atlanta DSA  will continue to fight in the coming years to elect socialist candidates who are willing to fight against both corporate Democrats and reactionary Republicans.

*Kyrsten Sinema, Bernie Sanders, and Angus King are independents, but they have caucused with the Democrats and have voted with the party line more than 90% of the time.

The post 3 Takeaways from Georgia’s Runoffs appeared first on Red Clay Comrade.

In this episode of Revolutions Per Minute, we will taking you first to Brooklyn and then to Puerto Rico, to explore how neoliberal austerity is wreaking havoc on the lives of ordinary people. I’ll be talking to New York City Council Member Alexa Aviles, of District 38 her first year in office.

Alexa is a proud DSA member and was endorsed by the movement prior to her election. She doesnt take real estate donations and has a track record of opposing the prison industrial complex, having worked to empower marginalized communities before her election as program director of the Scherman Foundation.

The second half of the show takes us to an interview with Ruth Santiago, a trustee of the non-profit Earthjustice who lives on Puerto Rico’s southern coast. As an attorney, Ruth has represented those fighting against environmental injustice in all its forms.

December 13, 2022

On December 12, after many weeks of tireless work by Akron city residents, Akron city council narrowly passed the toxic White Pond legislation and then took a targeted approach to silence those who spoke up against it. Council members largely fell in line with the wishes of the mayor, and when those who showed up to speak had an understandably emotional reaction to the vote, they were removed from council chambers by police — a clear violation of first amendment rights.

During continued chants in the hall, a police officer issued several orders to disperse, including an “official” order to vacate the floor and the building. At this last request, many residents began to descend the stairs from the third floor. Eleven individuals who had planned to speak made it out of earshot or off of the premises before those who remained were told by two councilpeople that there would still be a chance to speak during the public comment portion. Several residents requested Zoom call-in links be sent to those 11 who had registered to speak and were now absent, but these requests were denied. then denied the right to speak via Zoom during public comment.

In the interim, behind closed doors, Council passed legislation to add mandatory minimum jail time  for individuals found to be “menacing” toward city workers and public officials. Only one councilor, Councilman Russ Neal, voted against this legislation with concern about it being used only to advantage the city and silence those who speak out against them. Indeed, the wheels of fascism are turning. The City is afraid of dissent, and, with menacing’s vague definition, can now jail residents for disagreeing with public officials. 

We know as socialists that those in power fight to maintain the status quo; but that does not mean we will tolerate it. Like the rubber workers who fought for better conditions against political and police violence, the Civil Rights movement that fought laws based in white supremacy, and all other working class movements around the world that don’t back down, we will continue to fight. We know that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

Our capitalist, neoliberal society breeds inequity, but as socialists, it is our moral and ethical obligation to continue to fight to build an equitable and just Akron. 

You can email us here.

It was 2020: the Year of the Campaign Worker.

At least, that’s what one union organizer told us – our shop of rank-and-file campaign workers tired of constant exploitation in the industry. This was before the labor uprising, before workers formed a union at an Amazon factory in Staten Island, before the wave of unionization that has swept across the country at Starbucks and Trader Joe’s and Home Depot, before the so-called Great Resignation. But in 2019, starting with the unionization of the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders, workers began unionizing at campaigns across the country. That continued into the general election period at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Political campaign work is a burnout industry. It chews up idealistic young people and spits them out with ruined personal lives, addictions, and whatever other vices they need to survive. Oftentimes, campaigns provide next to nothing in wages. Instead of an adequate wage to pay for groceries, workers are fed narratives of self-sacrifice needed to “elect a candidate that can change this country.” I’ve met very few campaign workers above the age of thirty who last longer than a month on the campaign trail. Most young people work one cycle and do their best to escape to something that doesn’t kill their bodies right after. Those who continue tend to become bosses where they recreate the same exploitation they were dealt and talk about “paying your dues” so you, too, can become a boss.

In other words, campaign workers are ripe for labor organizing.

At the beginning of the pandemic, even though I had just left another exhausting campaign during the primary season as a field organizer where we worked seventy-hour weeks for far less than a living wage, where we had unionized, striked and staged walkouts in order to win severance pay for single-parent coworkers who needed paychecks, I took a job on a political campaign to survive the long winter of COVID-19. It was one month into the pandemic. The team was small, we weren’t unionized, and the bosses were typical – perpetuating the same old tyrannical norm.

The structure of large campaigns is authoritarian. Bosses atop the chain of command give orders to one mid-level manager after another, eventually leading down to the big pool of exploited workers called field organizers (FOs) at the bottom of the chain, which is what I was. 

Field organizers are the rank-and-file. While some bosses think that campaigns can run without field organizers (and many small shop campaigns do), large left-leaning campaigns that actually take on the monied interests of the Republican Party in battleground districts cannot function without field organizers because field organizers deliver what’s called the “field margin.” That’s the margin delivered by the labor of field organizers – the disciplined and exhaustive labor force that sways big elections.

Without a field margin, there’s no victory. Without field organizers, there’s no field margin.

In other words, the tried-and-true labor truism that the “bosses need us, we don’t need them” is 100 percent true on the campaign trail. The campaign that I joined in 2020 might have been able to shoot out as many mailers and endorsements and ads and social media posts as they wanted, but without us, the campaign had few relationships with the community. Without us, no doors got knocked. Without us, no phones got dialed. Without us, no volunteers were recruited. Without us, no voters got contacted.

Even though campaign workers hold the keys to the kingdom, field organizers have historically kept to organizing volunteers instead of our own workplaces. We didn’t view ourselves as workers any more than anyone else in the industry did. We were “staffers”, not campaign workers.

Many field organizers suffer from a malady I call  "West Wing Syndrome." Aaron Sorkin’s “The West Wing,” which ran on TV from 1999 to 2006, is a potion of romantic nostalgia and bourgeois liberalism about a fictional Democratic presidency closely resembling an idealized Clinton period. It depicts the world of campaigns as noble and chivalrous and its suit-jacket-slung-over-the-back clipboard-holding staffers as unsung heroes. 

Field organizers often make the awful mistake of viewing ourselves as those fictional staffers when, in reality, we are the people that protagonists of that show chew up to propel themselves to the White House and the Hill. Instead of realizing that the vast majority of campaign workers do not rise through the ranks, such campaign workers view themselves as workers only incidentally and staffers-in-waiting maximally. It goes against all rhyme and reason, all evidence-based analysis, and, conveniently, the result is a green light for exploitation by the bosses.

Labor organizing on the campaign trail requires undoing the liberal indoctrination of West Wing Syndrome. My fellow field organizers and I on the ___ campaign had minimal class consciousness until we began organizing our workplaces, despite the politics that we supported. For us, labor organizing was the art of becoming conscious of our roles as part of the working class, to become political in the Sorkin-style apolitical space of political work. Political campaigns have expanded larger than ever before, and as campaign work becomes increasingly professionalized, opportunities for labor organizing grow from the seeds of exploitation. 

When the campaign began that April, the campaign higher-ups slighted us one time after another.  Though our salary was adequate, managers viewed every action as a transaction. Every nice word from a manager felt like a ploy to make us perform better. Every meeting was a metric above our head for us to punch out better metrics. That was the norm in the industry, so our bosses weren’t prepared for workers’ discontent. 

But we had already begun to see ourselves as campaign workers more than campaign staffers, because of both the professionalization of field organizing and the ways in which we transformed problems on the campaign into labor issues. Our workplace was filled with black powder. We decided to form a union around the time that police murdered George Floyd and the rebellion of the summer began across the country. The fact that the bosses only grudgingly tolerated campaign workers’ participation in the Black Lives Matter uprising, often treating our activism as a nuisance to the need to make hundreds of calls a day, was a final straw for many workers.

We organized for card check. One of the ways to form an officially-recognized union in the United States requires more than fifty percent of the bargaining unit – the workers in a shop – to sign cards indicating they want to form a union and submit them to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). 

We faced challenges right off the bat. There was a constant turnover on the campaign that presented a challenge. People quit all the time and the workforce exponentially grew by the month, which means the bargaining unit grew exponentially by the month. We needed to keep the number of workers on the campaign that signed union cards above fifty percent to have the best chance of success if the campaign tried to play games. In other words, we needed to constantly hold organizing conversations with new hires to beat the high turnover.

Meanwhile, the campaign was rapidly atomizing. Initially, the campaign consisted of a dozen or so field organizers. We all shared a Signal chat and coordinated to initiate the unionization process. We were all on the same page. But as the campaign hired more and more field organizers, beefing up the department, each of us original workers were joined by new hires. Within a few months, there were over a hundred field organizers split across several teams who only interacted within their teams. Workers were less and less bonded to coworkers in other teams. And, most were indoctrinated with West Wing Syndrome and every single one required an organizing conversation of some kind.

A lack of solidarity with coworkers is poison for labor organizing. The atomization of the campaign into separate teams could have tanked the union. Sure, we had filed with the National Labor Relations Board with over fifty percent of workers signed on to the union. But if management argued to the government that we weren’t actually the number of workers in the company (namely, by using new hires as an anti-labor tactic), we would be in a dangerous zone.

We managed to keep up with new hires because of one aspect of campaigns that favored our effort: most of us original unionists were placed into different teams. As a result, we were strategically located in every team on the campaign. 

Every unionist was responsible for organizing their own team. In our team, within a day of onboarding, either I or another unionist engaged new coworkers in conversations about labor and the importance of signing a union card. These were by and large bread and butter organizing conversations. Some required nothing more than a few words as coworkers signed union cards with little prompt; others required more persuasion. 

Meanwhile, the campaign never knew who exactly was organizing. I had personally seen campaign union representatives fired as retaliation against unionization on previous campaigns, and so had other unionists. We had to keep the campaign guessing. We had to keep our identities as union organizers under wraps. 

But keeping up with the pace of union cards and anonymity was not enough. Campaigns are rapid-fire. They form quickly and collapse quickly. If we wanted to win any concessions, we needed to avoid delay. The longer that either the government or the campaign delayed, the less likely that unionization would make any difference for either us or future hires. But we inevitably had to wait months – a lifetime of quits and new hires in the industry – for our union to be ratified. We needed to be able to not only maintain discipline, but also organize in the interim. 

We took advantage of every slight, and there were many. The campaign was already a tinderbox. With each match that management struck, they threatened to engulf the workplace in the flames of labor unrest. They overhauled our work by sharpening the metrics by which they judged our work without adequate explanation and with no input from us and ordering us to give up on training our volunteers in favor of making more calls, which pissed us off. They told us to brush aside voters’ concerns about the candidate’s stance on healthcare and focus on metrics, which pissed us off.

The managers also displayed a callousness toward lower-level staff that fired us up. They infantilized a coworker in a private meeting with no input from us as the people who were actually on the ground, which pissed us off. They pressured immuno-compromised workers to knock on doors and expose themselves or their families to COVID-19, which pissed us off. They made us oversee fellows, unpaid interns exploited for their labor for no wage at all, which pissed us off. 

One manager said the f-slur out loud. That obviously pissed us off, too.

Every single one of these incidents became opportunities for organizing conversations. As a team, we would discuss each incident when it happened. We would support one another, empathize with one another, validate one another. 

Even though our team had not known each other just months before, and even though the makeup of the team constantly shifted with new hires, we unified through one conversation unpacking each incident after another. We came to collectively understand each unrelated situation as a labor issue. The incidents might not have been wage-related or benefits-related, but they happened in the workplace, so they were labor issues. These organizing conversations ensured that our team consolidated in our own understanding of our workplace and labor conditions, which provided fertile ground for collective action. 

And these incidents became politicized. Because I was an original hire and an open socialist, when I framed conversations about labor conditions in terms of class struggle, I had buy-in from new hires who did not share the same ideological background. Our understanding of our labor conditions, as a collective team, was thus shaped in part by a socialist analysis. Organizing around collective material interest brought the union to being. Each incident became fuel for our own rising class consciousness through one politicizing conversation after another. 

That core unity in our team became indispensable. We continued to organize as we waited for our union’s ratification. Each incident created conditions for collective action. When one coworker was affected by an issue, we all felt affected. An injury to one was, indeed, an injury to all. We would respond to labor problems as a group through a number of different methods that created pressure on management. Sometimes, in response to some slight, we agreed privately that we “didn’t feel like working” and collectively slowed down our work to a snail’s pace. When our bosses demanded to know why, we explained that we were so affected by whatever incident they had carried out that we didn’t have capacity to do more, but since we were still working, we were still trying.

These intentional labor slowdowns affected the bosses’ bottom line, which affected how they were perceived to their own bosses, all the way up the chain. They could berate us but not much else. Acting collectively was key, and ensured that retaliation was difficult. The strategy of slowdowns in response to conditions has much in common with spontaneous shop-floor tactics deployed throughout international labor history, notably “soaking mushrooms” (泡蘑菇), a tactic developed by Tianjin factory workers in the early 1900s during the Japanese occupation of northern China where workers would coordinate to slow down production in a way that overseers could not retaliate. On the campaign, we were soaking mushrooms.

Other days, we organized to interrupt team meetings. Usually, one selected person would voice our collective concern and everyone would back them up in the Zoom chat to show a united front. Just as with slowdowns, these interruptions backed by collective support prevented bosses from retaliating or even targeting the instigator. If you can’t detect the source of dissent, you can’t mitigate the effect. Hell, we didn’t even know the source. We were all instigators, because we all talked through labor conditions together. 

Between our socialist understanding of labor conditions and penchant for collective action, our team developed a reputation as the most militant segment of the rank-and-file. The individuals who made up our team were not all self-described socialists, but we formed the most left-wing team on the campaign. That influenced the overall bargaining unit as we interacted with other coworkers in turn. And since we also happened to organize the best of any other team, we were indispensable to management. We could agitate for better labor conditions and apply pressure to management without extreme fear of retaliation, as long as we acted together.

Eventually, the union was ratified by the National Labor Relations Board. We elected representatives to form our bargaining team and negotiate a new contract based on our democratic input. We won a contract that included a pay raise and more equitable benefits for our work. Most importantly, we won the right for the union to represent the workers regardless of turnover. As long as the organization that runs the campaign apparatus exists, election cycle after election cycle, our union remains the legal union representing the campaign workers; it remains to this day.

While we celebrated the contract, even more important than those wins was the transformation of ourselves from field organizers to an organized base of campaign workers capable of collective action. In Teamster Rebellion, labor leader Farrell Dobbs documents the strategies utilized to build the industrial union movement during the 1934 labor strikes in Minneapolis. Dobbs describes how workers were baptized in the fires of class struggle through the strike and emerged with a newfound confidence in their own power. 

That was precisely my experience. Organizing my workplace alongside my coworkers was crucial to becoming conscious of our abilities as working people to change the world. Collective action makes the impossible possible. 

The Year of the Campaign Worker is over, but many campaign workers have gone on to organize in other movement spaces. The president of the Campaign Workers Guild (CWG), my old union from another campaign, now sits on the National Political Committee of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). As for me, during the campaign, I began volunteering for the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC), a national DSA project in partnership with the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE) to build a distributed program to support workers organizing their workplaces. That began my involvement in DSA, which has since expanded to local organizing in DSA chapters like the second largest in the South – our very own DSA NC Triangle. 

My advice: Organize your workplace. If you want to have a voice, organize your workplace. If you want to make a massive difference in North Carolina and beyond, organize your workplace. If you want to build the left, organize your workplace. While each workplace represents different challenges, every workplace can be organized. If you do, you’ll be in good company. Pro-labor sentiment in the United States has reached its highest since the 1960s. The wildfire of the labor uprising has spread across the country, from workers in digital media, to baristas and tech workers, to Amazon workers. And since we organized in 2020, the National Labor Relations Board has become far more pro-labor than before and stands increasingly on the side of working people again. 

Most importantly, we can learn from one another, share materials, and support each other’s efforts as we organize our workplaces. Through collective action, we can improve all of our lives and change history.

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