Building an Army to Fight Runaway Inequality

Labor Notes profiled CWA’s successful and growing Runaway Inequality training program:

How can unions help create a social movement to take on Wall Street's economic and political dominance?

That’s the question that the Communications Workers (CWA) are tackling with labor educator Les Leopold. The training program they've put together, based on his book Runaway Inequality: An Activist’s Guide to Economic Justice, has already reached hundreds of union members and community activists in a dozen states—where it's getting rave reviews and helping fuel the growth of local coalitions.

Participants get a crash course in the rapidly growing gap between the super-rich and ordinary workers. They learn how the ever-growing power of hedge funds and private equity managers has put our government in thrall to the billionaire class and contributed to environmental devastation, racial discrimination, an outsized prison population, and plummeting wages.

"We went over it, we practiced it, and we did it—and they sent us out into the world," says Dennis Dunn, a Verizon FiOS tech and chief steward with Local 1108 on Long Island. Now dozens of rank-and-file trainers regularly lead the workshops for other union members and community activists.

Read the full piece here.