Just wondering if anything good is happening somewhere. Maybe some local organizing wins? Would be nice to see something positive happening.
Just wondering if anything good is happening somewhere. Maybe some local organizing wins? Would be nice to see something positive happening.
Yes.
Have you kept up with the labor movement since 2020?
I know one of the big ones just Endorsed “uncommitted” in the primary.
And yeah, labor is doing better than it was a few years ago. Hard to share in that when trying to organize Starbucks near me fell apart.
You helped organize a union for Starbucks (or at least tried to)?
You have my respect, comrade.
o7
That experience may have seemed pointless. I know the feeling of campaigning for a union push and failing. But I guarantee you learned more than think while doing it. You’re a better organizer than you were before. That’s good.
Union density is down and socialists are failing to gain workplace organizing skills and running their own projects with them. Instead they’re either not getting the skills at all or they gain them but LARP about it, becoming staff at a liberal union and deluding themselves into believing that this is a particularly socialist thing to do.
There are exceptions to this, of course, but it’s a tiny slice of an already small minority (socialists that actually organize > labor focused socialists > socialists that organize labor without getting paid for it > socialists that organize labor as part of their own projects).
Union density is not down; just the opposite.
And yes, you should join a liberal or a conservative union like the ones at the AFL-CIO, not just the IWW.
Edit: Too much focus on the IWW unions and not on other independent unions or AFL-CIO unions.
Nope union density is down https://jacobin.com/2024/01/strikes-union-density-labor-movement. This has been a trend for decades.
Joining a union as staff is not inherently a good thing to do and I would tell anyone thinking of doing it just because someone told them it’s the socialist thing to do or part of “the movement” to reconsider. They are coopted by liberals and have NGO culture so unless you are ready to work 70-80 hour weeks for worse pay and have the entirety of your political organizing within it amount to getting shat on for not being all-in in Genocide Joe, get another job and you’ll do more for our cause. When socialists make progress within the staff of unions it’s because we already know how to organize and we create an outsized impact by getting together and forming caucuses ready for years-long strategic campaigns. You’ll have to do that against opposition by not just liberals but also the Trots that will be in any large union because they have 100% bought the line that working for unions is the socialist thing to do.
We should be organizing our own unions.
Actually, union density has gone up and you’re literally using Jacobin to back you up.
100% wrong. These are public stats from the government linked in the article. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm
Exactly, the government.
You’re not thinking.
Many outlets have said that union rates have grown in their area.
The government is the only entity tracking union density for the US as a whole. When we talk about union density it’s a government-tracked statistic of how many people are in unions. If you were referring to another source of such statistics with which I’m not familiar despite me organizing in space for years and following it closely, feel free to share it.
I’m sure union density has increased in certain locations but overall it has decreased.
The state of organized labor in the US is not actually looking good there are just some salient examples getting headlines. Those examples are atually pretty iffy if you familiarize yourself with them.I would never use US organized labor to give people an example of current wins. That’s setting them up for disappointment and maybe even nihilism when the realities make themselves more obvious later.
For example, it is plausible that SBWU may never get a contract and will lose via slow attrition. Amazon warehouses are in a terrible state. It’s really all up in the air and we should not expect big wins, particularly from SEIU’s half-assery and ALU functioning mostly as a Chris Smalls fan club.
They are not. There are independent sources that cover these things, just like there are independent sources that cover strikes that say that strikes are going up statistically… even though the government says differently!
We don’t even know if they include IWW unions!
The union rate is rising until people can give proof otherwise.
You can join both! Dual carding is a big thing in the IWW, I know quite a few people who EO for the IWW and organize their workplace with an AFL-CIO union.
Yeah, I know, I just think that we have to join AFL-CIO unions as well (or independent unions besides IWW).
Over-focusing on IWW would mean putting too much of our time and resources on, well, helping that union out and giving a communist voice.
I’ve seen how AFL-CIO unions can swing left if given a communist voice or personnel; we need to be everywhere, be ubiquitous, and not just prioritize one union albeit a large one like the IWW.
(But the IWW is great, don’t get me wrong, and helping 'em out or growing their ranks is welcome, but like I said, we need to be everywhere.)
That’s all I was saying.