Philadelphia

I was not surprised because part of the reason I had agreed to support the great work in Philly lay at the footsteps of a good example of the potential of majority unionism.  For several years JwJ here under its director Fabricio Rodriguez had been involved in the long, arduous process of supporting the building of an organization among the 175 security workers at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  After several years the organization had navigated the obstacles for security workers in organizing and recently had transitioned to an independent union, filed, and won a representation election handily, and not surprisingly having already proven the organization at the workplace long ago.  Now, they challenges of bargaining away, but that’s another story.

Majority unionism is what I have called the process of changing the labor organizing paradigm to allow workers first (not employers!) decide they want an organization, build strength through direct membership and direct action, and using that power along with community and political leverage to win recognition and advances regardless of any other obstacles in law or habit.  This kind of strategy led to the huge success in our generation among informal workers (home health and home day care) which have added more than a half-million members in the last 30 years to the ranks of organized labor.  This is also the heart of the successful pilot we led in Florida several years ago to prove that Wal-Mart workers could be organized a different way.

The hard question asked by several of the union lawyers and reps in the room, was how do you make the organization sustainable over the time frame necessary to win?  This question was particularly important because the examples from home health care and Wal-Mart were based on more modest dues levels (in some cases only $10/month) than what many of them were accustomed to seeing in existing unions.  Certainly this had also been our challenge as well, and led to our independent union becoming part of the SEIU, and kept us from continuing the Wal-Mart Workers Association as an independent entity.

The answer I was too well mannered to give was that this question lies at the heart of the dilemma between being a union movement and an institutional structure.  The efforts among farmworkers, home care workers, and others – including what we are doing with ragpickers and cartoneros now – are rooted in deep political, individual, and organizational commitments over long time frames of sacrifice and struggle until victory is achieved.  These are projects that don’t fit the normal box of excellent wages and benefits for union organizers, but will be driven by rare organizing zealots willing to pay the price for years in the conviction and passion that success will justify the climb long into the future.  There’s a crazy, courageous history to this, but my friends were right:  it’s not a model.

But it is a way to shift the paradigm and turn the tide, especially if we can convince unions and others to help balance the books while the work is done until what I, perhaps crazily, believe will be the inevitable victory.  The workers want organizations.  They want power on the job.  Eventually, we are going to have to pay the dues, and give them what they demand, even if it is harder than we like and different than what we know.

Washington

I stumbled into the fine hall after the ceremony had already begun, taking a seat just behind Jon Hiatt, Sweeney’s long time general counsel at SEIU and now the AFL, who reached out his hand, and Bill Lurye, from New Orleans sitting down the row past Ray Abernathy and Denise Mitchell, the communications wizards I had known so long.

Listening to John read his very personal speech, I could see Ray imperceptibly nodding as he heard the words that he had no doubt helped shape for John as he has so many times before.  In the wake of the Ted Kennedy funeral and the very public expressions of faith, including the revelation of the recent letter from Senator Kennedy that was hand delivered by President Obama to the Pope, John and Ray had obviously decided in this very Jesuit institution to have John speak very comfortably and personally in his own testament to his Catholic faith as part of his service to working people.  Bob Welsh later commented to me at the reception that for all of the thousands of speeches he has heard John give this was the first one he could recall that was so deeply and personally Catholic as a man, rather than as even a Catholic labor leader.

Having long heard the Sweeney standard preamble that recognizes virtually every labor leader in any room where he is speaking, the beginning was more personal and less political as he named every Sweeney relative in the room and only mentioned Rich Trumka, his coming successor, whom I visited with later, and Arlene Holt, who I may have missed in the crowd.  Clearly, I was hearing the end of Sweeney’s political service and something of his transition to whatever his new and more personal service is likely to be.

Reading the program, it was hard to believe that he had been at the AFL-CIO for 14 years.  Could it have been that long?  And, that he had headed SEIU for 15 years.  Was it really that brief?

The President of Georgetown, Dr. John DeGioia, may have captured his recent career better in noting what I would call his “stewardship” in keeping faith in hard times for institutional labor.  Perhaps that subdued and solid note is most apt. Though it’s sad in a sense of what “could have been” to those of us who stood and hollered, as I did as a proud delegate from the New Orleans AFL-CIO and comrade from SEIU for my President as he spoke as the candidate of change and hope to reform and revitalize labor and offered to lead the AFL-CIO in a different direction in New York in that convention, when Sweeney won as a reform candidate there now years ago.  Now, we have a shattered house of labor still trying to find its future, and an AFL-CIO that is still profoundly better than what he found there, I believe, but still not what we had hoped it might have become.

My friends, comrades, brothers and sisters with whom I’ve shared so much were there in full, graying force.  It was good to see Gerry Shea whose path has now crossed and intertwined with mine for 40 years now back to welfare rights.

It was sobering at the reception to visit with Steven Greenhouse, the Times’ labor reporter, and ask him, as one of the most knowledgeable observers from outside the various houses of labor, where he thought the best new organizing was happening in the country, and realize that what used to a casual and easy question, had clearly caught him off guard.   He easily cited for Joe McCartin the stories where he had covered my organizing on his beat, when I directed the HOTROC campaign among hospitality workers in New Orleans as part of the early Sweeney AFL-CIO organizing offense when our shared friend, Kirk Adams, was the AFL’s Organizing Director, and again in Orlando and Tampa when he covered the drives we were running among Wal-Mart workers on a project supported by the AFL, SEIU, and the UFCW, when we were still all together and still trying to break new organizing ground just five years ago until everything split apart in the middle of our work.  On one hand he confessed that his editors weren’t really interested in organizing, but also conceded that there wasn’t much he could find either.  His last big organizing story he said might have been the campaign that I had helped develop and shepherd through as a partnership with ACORN and the UFT to organize the tens of thousands of home child care workers in New York City.  Joe more gracefully changed the subject to the organizing I was doing internationally to create unions of waste pickers in India, but the work there doesn’t explain or excuse the “waiting for EFCA” vacuum in so much organizing here.

Sweeney time and service was being appropriately recognized, and he and his team deserved the thanks for progress made and promised kept, even if there were many dreams unrealized and disappointments on the road.  It was an honor just to be in the room and to be fortunate enough to be there for such a great occasion with some many comrades and friends.  Many if there were more hosts and facilitators like the good, committed Jesuits of Georgetown and the thoughtful wise veterans in the allied trades, like Professor and friend, Joe McCartin, we could still make many of these dreams still come true.

The papers were full of reports of possible compromises looking for a way to secure a vote here or there. Some of it was patently absurd. Workers just can’t seem to catch a break!

Good example: Chamber of Commerce. One story, I think by the Times’ Greenhouse said the Chamber was demanding 45 days between filing and an election – heck, the average now is less than than I think! These folks are obviously just obfuscating.

There is talk about “quick” elections in the 21 day or 3 week range, which would be about half the average now. Anything might be better than what we have, but one world of hurt can be administered to workers in 3 weeks by these lawyer and consultant goons, so it’s unclear whether that will solve the problem or any real problem at all?

Senator Diane Feinstein from California seemed to be shopping a compromise that would forego elections if a majority of workers mailed in their signed cards to the NLRB for cross checking. Frankly, that’s a hard one for me to follow. A business might want to challenge the demand for recognition if it is presented to the labor board, but would not if it were mailed to the labor board? Would the future rely on constant litigation trying to prove whether a worker personally went to the mailbox or had a friend or their local union representative go to the mailbox for them? Huh?

Why all of the grabbing at straws? This is broken. Fix it!

    But, and a big, fat “but” it is, the rest of the architecture of the campaign particularly at 30,000 feet where our allies have been engaged seems to be either shriveling or unraveling, despite what I would swear is success.

    Andrew Grossman, the former director of Wal-Mart Watch, stepped down earlier this year, clearly having come to an analysis that the “watch” part of the campaign was not going to grow.  The “watch” focused on moving the media around the Wal-Mart brand.

    Jason Judd, who directed the Wal-Mart campaign support from the Change to Win federation has now moved out of that job at of the end of June, signaling a greater effort one would think by the United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) through its Wake Up Wal-Mart effort.  Jason had been focused on moving against the supply chain to Wal-Mart and very supportive of the campaign we continue to run in India, so he will be missed as well.

    Last week’s Wall Street Journal reported that Paul Blank, campaign director for UFCW’s Wake-Up Wal-Mart effort, despite numerous protestations to the country over his tenure, was in fact close to a “package” deal (including the Wake-Up communications director) to go over to the Edwards for President campaign in some capacity.  Since Paul had been a “Deaniac” on that effort from the early days, I had often asked if his commitment to the Wal-Mart effort was until the next cycle or long-term, and of course he had always assured me that it was “long-term.”  The field director for Wake-Up had already defected.  Not sure who or how many of these troops are left, but they managed the “internet” assault on the company.

    When we began our work on Wal-Mart almost three years ago, this was a wide based effort supported by all of labor (including the AFL-CIO).  Now we look around and wonder where our friends and allies will be as we continue to fight the company?

    Sure Wal-Mart is a $250+ billion outfit, but darned if it wasn’t getting closer and closer to its knees.  It’s a shame to see the company have a chance to crawl back off its knees.