By Chris Townsend
Legendary US trade union and communist leader William Z. Foster instructed workers more than 100 years ago that, “the left wing must do the work.” There are many ways to measure the multiple crises that some days seem to doom our trade union movement, and a small recent episode in greater Washington, DC illustrates much of the problem we have when it comes to stimulating trade unions to do the basic work of organizing the unorganized masses. It also reveals the simple answer to the question of “What can the scattered socialists do to get union organizing going?”
The crisis of new union organizing
Some new union organizing does proceed today under the steady hand of trained, veteran union staff. Some goes forward driven by young, mostly inexperienced but highly motivated organizers. For all of that we can be grateful. All of it is heroic, but the cumulative results are insufficient to make even a small dent in the magnitude of the crisis.
As Trump’s recent attacks on the federal unions in the US reveal, it will take years and years just to regain these lost union members given the snail pace of new organizing by the labour movement.
Where are the unions? Mostly they just sit, inert, consumed with their own internal worlds, and increasingly surrounded on all sides by hostile elements. Taking the trade union message out to the unorganized workplaces to spread the hopeful word among the toilers is either an unknown activity or, at best, an occasional field trip reserved for paid staff.
In many business unions new organizing is a bothersome “bill” that they can, and do, avoid paying. The most urgent crisis facing the labour movement today – its refusal to dramatically launch mass campaigns to organize the unorganized – has only worsened.
Where is the left?
“Organize the unorganized!” has been the call of our left in past decades, but not today. With some energetic exceptions, we instead see our fractured, scattered, and tiny left forces largely engaged in 101 different pursuits. Some are more compelling than others, but few if any are connected directly to the workplace or the trade unions. The workplace is mostly off-limits. With few left forces willing to demand or do the difficult work of new organizing, retreat becomes inevitable.
What can one union member do?
A little more than two years ago, Sean Tierney came out to a new union organizing school I was running in Northern Virginia. Sean works as a driver for a private contractor company in suburban Washington, DC. He takes senior citizens and people with disabilities to wherever they need to go, and he is a member of the Teamsters union. He is a socialist, and he keeps up with developments across our scattered labour movement and left wing.
Sean had one question: “Can the mechanics at my company join the union?” I answered, “Yes, of course, but you have to do the work of signing them up.” He then volunteered that he didn’t think that his union local business agent was interested in organizing them. He had been told already that they could not be organized. Sean didn’t know it yet, but he was supposed to give up right then. And he didn’t.
The good news is that on August 7, thanks strictly to the diligent work of Teamster member Sean Tierney, eight mechanics at his company voted by a 7 to 1 margin to join his local union. These workers, somehow left out when the unit was originally organized, now come under the coverage of the Teamsters union contract that covers Sean and 80-odd co-workers at the company.
Any union with an actual organizing program would have long ago identified this group and brought them into the union. Sean made it happen with his many months of persistent effort. He talked to the workers over and over again, answering their questions and keeping their morale up during the months when it looked like the union was never going to do anything.
Small union win reveals major underlying crisis
Why did this process take 15 months? Did it take that long to sign up the workers? No, Sean did that in a couple days. Was it because the company resisted? No, the company never did anything to block it or slow it down. I was mystified why such an elementary organizing task was not proceeding.
From the point that the union finally requested that the labour relations board conduct an election until that election was won took exactly 3 weeks, that’s it. Again, what was the holdup? Well, the record is clear: during Sean’s entire 15-month quest to try to organize his eight co-workers into his union, each and every delay or dodge was orchestrated by one or another staff member of his union local. That’s right. The paid staff of the union. They stared at him. Said they would get back to him. They told him they were “working on it.”
Apparently, being untrained and lacking in much real organizing interest or needed experience, the union staff knew little about how the organizing process worked. Is every Teamsters local like this? Certainly not – there are many who are organizing, and some are winning. So, Sean kept pushing month after month.
Business union failure to organize
All along, the game was to see if Sean Tierney would go away. The business union goal after all is to control the members, keep them in the dark, keep them “in line” and looking up to the leadership and staff uncritically.
In many unions – and there are far, far too many like this today – the members are not supposed to question things. Members asking questions are viewed with suspicion. Even if the member is trying to organize new members into their own local union. Even if the process of organizing these workers is about as simple as bending over to pick up some money laying on the ground. And you might think that this local union was overflowing with new members? No, federal government reports indicate that in the past three years alone this local has lost 2,800 members.
Sean Tierney is as pro-union as they come in this working class. But rather than put him to work helping to address this crisis, he gets pushed away for almost a year and a half. Sean Tierney alone expanded his shop’s union membership by 10 percent – small, yes, but this opens the door to additional organizing where he lives.
Given that there are hundreds of unorganized shops and workers by the tens of thousands all over the area, hopefully his local union will take him seriously when he brings in the next organizing lead.
Follow the example of Sean Tierney
Sean has also had to wrangle with his local union over the past several years to bargain a better contract, and to encourage the members to get involved – even a little. He has been working for the past year to ensure that the members in his unit have access to a functioning and trained union steward.
Sean, a socialist and a solid union worker, has never become demoralized to the point of giving up. He talks with other union members he knows who face similar situations – or even worse – and shows what support he can. He stays as active as he can visiting picket lines and doing his duty to push back against Trump. He reads and studies to learn more about how the union can function better, going to meetings and seminars at his own expense.
Most unions tragically provide very little in the way of trade union study and training for members who want to actually build their own union. That needs to change – it has been a problem for many decades.
I want to salute the tough, unrecognized good work of Sean Tierney as he lives out Foster’s admonition that “the left wing must do the work.” Each small task to rebuild worker confidence in trade unions as fighting organizations is a critical step forward. Sean sets an example for us all to follow. He has never allowed his employer or his own union to deflect him, demoralize him or aggravate him into giving up.
If more on the left would take seriously the need to do their part in organizing the unorganized, and rebuilding and strengthening our unions, we would notice the difference.
Marxism-Leninism Today
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