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Remaking the Labor Movement: Which Direction For Organized Labor?
Essays on Organizing, Outreach and Internal Transformations
Edited by Bruce Nissen
Wayne State University Press, Detroit
264 pages, soft cover, $28.95
While barons of big business are gloating over the statistical "decline" of unions, activists and scholars are sharing vibrant ideas to revitalize the labor movement for a new millennium.
Bruce Nissen, program director at the Center for Labor Research at Florida International University, has collected 12 essays from a broad spectrum of labor leaders including CWA Executive Vice President Larry Cohen and CWA Representative Steve Early. Nissen coauthored one essay with Seth Rosen, administrative assistant to CWA District 4 Vice President Jeffrey Rechenbach. In all, 16 authors examine every aspect of organized labor — its history, internal politics, external political influence, new attitudes and new forms of union activism.
In their essay, "Defending Workers’ Rights in the Global Economy: The CWA Experience," Cohen and Early discuss the evolution of CWA’s alliances with communications unions around the world, in response to the growth of the multinational corporation. For example, they cite the transformation of NYNEX from a firm that in 1989 derived 90 percent of its revenue from local telephone service to a company that in the early 1990s planned to earn 25 percent of its income abroad by the end of this decade. Its $23 billion merger with Bell Atlantic created the second largest communications company in the United States.
Cohen and Early quote Bell Atlantic Chairman Ray Smith’s defense of the merger as a necessity to meet foreign competition from European giants British Telecom and Deutsche Telekom: "Our market isn’t this country any more...it’s the world." And they note BT Chairman Iain Vallance’s prediction that the current merger trend will lead to only "four or five global telecommunications companies."
"Clearly CWA’s future bargaining or organizing involving multinational firms may not succeed unless the union has international alliances and joint ventures of its own that enable workers here to act in concert with their brothers and sisters abroad," the authors posit. They explain how CWA has worked with Communications International, a virtual United Nations of postal and telecommunications unions, to develop a growing network of international labor alliances.
The unions have put together joint codes of conduct, jointly protested and mobilized against unethical treatment of workers in each other’s countries, and developed joint organizing campaigns where employers or interests are shared. In 1989 CWA partnered with the Canadian Auto Workers and the Communications Workers of Canada, then known as the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union, to fight plant closings by Northern Telecom in Canada and to support a strike by CWA Local 1109 members employed by Northern Telecom in Brooklyn, New York.
Other examples Cohen and Early explain at length include a 1995 joint organizing school in Laredo, Texas for 15 CWA organizers and 18 from STRM, the independent telecommunications union of Mexico. Subsequently, two STRM organizers worked on a CWA campaign to organize Spanish-speaking truckers in Los Angeles, they note. STRM and CWA have also worked together through the North American Free Trade Agreement’s labor side accord to fight injustices against workers at Sprint’s La Conexion Familiar in San Francisco and at the Maxi-Switch maquiladora plant in Sonora.
CWA’s more recent alliances the authors discuss include Deutsche Postgewerkschaft, the postal and telephone workers of Germany; IG Metall, the German metalworkers federation; and the Communication Workers Union and the Society of Telecom Executives of Great Britain.
The members of all these unions, they conclude, "are discovering that the workers of the world do need to unite. Otherwise, the telecommunications revolution could end up forging what, for them, will be a new set of chains."
In "Community-Based Organizing: Transforming Union Organizing Programs from the Bottom Up," Rosen and Nissen describe how — with great success — CWA has shifted from a nationally based to a locally based organizing strategy over the last two decades, spurred by the 1984 AT&T divestiture.
CWA evolved a new organizing philosophy using local organizers, based in the community with support from the national union, who continue to cultivate their skills and train additional community-based organizers. Rosen has spent much of his career as organizing coordinator for District 4, which encompasses Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin. His is the story of how District 4 built a strong organizing network using tools such as an organizing newsletter and sharing experiences through annual retreats for local leaders.
The authors conclude with a valuable lesson: "...often lost in the discussion of increasing the resources devoted to organizing is the point that people are the most plentiful resource in the labor movement."
With 10 additional perspectives on the state of the labor movement, organizing the unorganized, outreach and internal transformation, "Which Direction for Organized Labor?" is both a thought-provoking resource and a call to action.
To order, call toll-free 1-800-WSU-READ.
Reviewed by John Cusick,
Senior Writer/Editor
Edited by Bruce Nissen
Wayne State University Press, Detroit
264 pages, soft cover, $28.95
While barons of big business are gloating over the statistical "decline" of unions, activists and scholars are sharing vibrant ideas to revitalize the labor movement for a new millennium.
Bruce Nissen, program director at the Center for Labor Research at Florida International University, has collected 12 essays from a broad spectrum of labor leaders including CWA Executive Vice President Larry Cohen and CWA Representative Steve Early. Nissen coauthored one essay with Seth Rosen, administrative assistant to CWA District 4 Vice President Jeffrey Rechenbach. In all, 16 authors examine every aspect of organized labor — its history, internal politics, external political influence, new attitudes and new forms of union activism.
In their essay, "Defending Workers’ Rights in the Global Economy: The CWA Experience," Cohen and Early discuss the evolution of CWA’s alliances with communications unions around the world, in response to the growth of the multinational corporation. For example, they cite the transformation of NYNEX from a firm that in 1989 derived 90 percent of its revenue from local telephone service to a company that in the early 1990s planned to earn 25 percent of its income abroad by the end of this decade. Its $23 billion merger with Bell Atlantic created the second largest communications company in the United States.
Cohen and Early quote Bell Atlantic Chairman Ray Smith’s defense of the merger as a necessity to meet foreign competition from European giants British Telecom and Deutsche Telekom: "Our market isn’t this country any more...it’s the world." And they note BT Chairman Iain Vallance’s prediction that the current merger trend will lead to only "four or five global telecommunications companies."
"Clearly CWA’s future bargaining or organizing involving multinational firms may not succeed unless the union has international alliances and joint ventures of its own that enable workers here to act in concert with their brothers and sisters abroad," the authors posit. They explain how CWA has worked with Communications International, a virtual United Nations of postal and telecommunications unions, to develop a growing network of international labor alliances.
The unions have put together joint codes of conduct, jointly protested and mobilized against unethical treatment of workers in each other’s countries, and developed joint organizing campaigns where employers or interests are shared. In 1989 CWA partnered with the Canadian Auto Workers and the Communications Workers of Canada, then known as the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union, to fight plant closings by Northern Telecom in Canada and to support a strike by CWA Local 1109 members employed by Northern Telecom in Brooklyn, New York.
Other examples Cohen and Early explain at length include a 1995 joint organizing school in Laredo, Texas for 15 CWA organizers and 18 from STRM, the independent telecommunications union of Mexico. Subsequently, two STRM organizers worked on a CWA campaign to organize Spanish-speaking truckers in Los Angeles, they note. STRM and CWA have also worked together through the North American Free Trade Agreement’s labor side accord to fight injustices against workers at Sprint’s La Conexion Familiar in San Francisco and at the Maxi-Switch maquiladora plant in Sonora.
CWA’s more recent alliances the authors discuss include Deutsche Postgewerkschaft, the postal and telephone workers of Germany; IG Metall, the German metalworkers federation; and the Communication Workers Union and the Society of Telecom Executives of Great Britain.
The members of all these unions, they conclude, "are discovering that the workers of the world do need to unite. Otherwise, the telecommunications revolution could end up forging what, for them, will be a new set of chains."
In "Community-Based Organizing: Transforming Union Organizing Programs from the Bottom Up," Rosen and Nissen describe how — with great success — CWA has shifted from a nationally based to a locally based organizing strategy over the last two decades, spurred by the 1984 AT&T divestiture.
CWA evolved a new organizing philosophy using local organizers, based in the community with support from the national union, who continue to cultivate their skills and train additional community-based organizers. Rosen has spent much of his career as organizing coordinator for District 4, which encompasses Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin. His is the story of how District 4 built a strong organizing network using tools such as an organizing newsletter and sharing experiences through annual retreats for local leaders.
The authors conclude with a valuable lesson: "...often lost in the discussion of increasing the resources devoted to organizing is the point that people are the most plentiful resource in the labor movement."
With 10 additional perspectives on the state of the labor movement, organizing the unorganized, outreach and internal transformation, "Which Direction for Organized Labor?" is both a thought-provoking resource and a call to action.
To order, call toll-free 1-800-WSU-READ.
Reviewed by John Cusick,
Senior Writer/Editor