I had a chance to put my 2 cents in to Wisconsin AFL-CIO Pres. ♦David Newby this a.m. on Wisconsin Public Radio, where he was doing his annual Labor Day program. Here’s what I said that I think may lay ahead for organized labor (elaborated of course, longer than a 3-minute bit on the radio). I believe the most active days, biggest challenges, may still be in store, rather than relegated to dusty history books. [Or e-books. Would Amazon even put a real labor history on its Kindle system]?
Two mega-trends: de-globalization (with relocalization) of some manufacturing and much of the agricultural raw material production due to the peak of global oil production; and the continuation for a time of globalized production under huge transnational chains such as McDonalds, WalMart, etc., will both call for labor organizing.
Last summer we briefly heard talk about U.S. manufacturers “onshoring” or de-outsourcing jobs back to the USA due to the soaring costs of transporting everything by diesel fuel. This was just before the massive shock doctrine application to the financial sector which brought the global economy to a standstill. Once global demand again exceeds supply for petroleum, this process may gain steam. No, it will gain steam
Add to this process the so-called “green jobs” push, and I think you’ll see a lot more smaller, local, non-multinational manufacturers than was the case during the heyday of the transnationals.
However, having done union organizing, and having run NLRB elections as a union staffer (also having participated in one as an in-shop organizer) I can tell you, small, local and family-owned are not synonymous with labor peace. Some of the small, local, family-owned companies are the nastiest and quickest to resort to union-busting dirty tricks. It ain’t all E.F. Schumacher happy hippy harmony in Smallville industrial parks, I can assure you. This will probably be true of small, local, “green job” companies. There’s no guarantee these will be labor-friendly.
The new “card choice” legislation needs to get passed, and strengthened as well.
The other sector of organizing needs to be the vast service sector, as I mentioned above, and labor needs to step up efforts to reach those who have already crossed the “race to the bottom” finish line: part-timers, the working poor, the barely-employed. These folks need to be union members. And I think they will prove to be the most activist of union members if allowed to be by those at the top. Often, top union leaders are too quick to appease the Democratic Party, and put the brakes on radicalism at the rank-and-file level. I lived through all that white-bread, “pork-chop unionism” in the ’70s and ’80s, and it’s still a problem.
In time, the WalMarts of the world will too collapse under the stresses that global peak oil production promises. WalMart is, as Kunstler remarks, a giant “warehouse on wheels” and can’t be sustained as it exists now–nor can most others of its kind. But that’s getting a bit too off-topic for now.
I’d say there’s still a big role for labor organizers in the years ahead. These folks need to learn how to work with local community activists, with sustainability people, with greenheads of all sorts, in order to have maximum impact.
But you know, “yes, we can” (organize a peaceful social revolution).
Bobby G
(originally posted on Wisconsin Green Party group list-serve)