Yes, It Is Organizing: Workers Centers and the Labor Movement

By Jacob Lesniewski
In These Times
Jan 3, 2011

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/6806/yes_it_is_organizing/

Don't believe the doctrinaire dismissal: workers centers are
a crucial part of the labor movement

Once again, those of us who work at and think about workers
centers are confronted by a labor writer's first and last
impression of workers centers: initial intrigue followed by a
quick dismissal that boils down to this: They're not unions,
so they don't do organizing, so they are for all intents and
purposes irrelevant.

It's unfortunate that so many who write about the labor
movement have such a limited understanding of what organizing
is and what makes a movement, as the labor movement purports
to do, "move."

The piece I'm referring to-"But Is It Organizing?"-has been
making the rounds in the leftosphere. The piece appeared on
Talking Union, a the labor blog of Democratic Socialists of
America (DSA), and was authored by Bob Roman, who edits New
Ground, the publication of DSA's Chicago chapter. It's been
posted on the left-wing listserv Portside and elsewhere.

First off, even the briefest of perusals of contemporary and
historical models of organizing should indicate that "old-
fashioned union organizing" is not the only model of making
change through "people power." In fact, good old-fashioned,
pre-AFL labor organizing often looked a lot like the
organizing that workers centers, especially the Restaurant
Opportunities Center (ROC)-which is mentioned in the piece-do
right now. If the only valid result of organizing is an
increase in union density, then what of the work of
Highlander Center and other groups in the civil rights
movement that transformed ordinary folks into civil rights
leaders and activists?

Is community policing, a model similar to what workers
centers do with grassroots enforcement of labor laws, not
organizing? What of the feminist rape crisis centers that
leveraged a social service into a movement that changed
policy and attitudes around rape? Is it possible that workers
centers are "relational platforms" that bring together allies
(even unions!) and workers in ways that build movements that
improve conditions of work for low-wage workers? Is it
possible that workers centers provide a physical and
ideological space for low-wage workers and allies to be
"labor activists" in ways that unions can't? Is any of that
organizing?

Workers centers aren't unions and don't do union organizing
because of the state. And not for the reasons noted in the
piece-the idea that workers centers are somehow reliant on
the state to advocate for low-wage workers-but because the
state shapes the context in which any organization or social
movement operates.

Does Roman assume that Pinkerton detectives no longer attack
union organizers because of the good will of employers?
Perhaps we can assume that the NRLA and the Wagner Act had
something to do with legitimating and protection unions.

The strong dichotomy that many writers assume exists between
unions and workers centers is not (completely) due to the
latent anarchism of workers center leaders or the
conservatism of mobbed-up labor union bosses, but because of
American labor law. Workers centers arose because the
constraints of the legal framework governing unions are
significant obstacles to "organizing" (in the union sense)
large numbers of workers in the modern economy.

Besides, the notion that workers centers are reliant on the
state is wrong. Workers centers have an ambiguous
relationship to state and federal Departments of Labor, even
the "new" federal DOL under Hilda Solis. DOL complaints are
either a last resort when direct action pressure fails, or
part of a larger strategy that includes direct action and
other mobilizing work. Workers centers use direct action and
popular education to empower workers to enforce labor laws on
their own. Is that organizing?

Permeating dismissals of workers centers is the idea that
union density is the only appropriate measure of labor
movement strength. That's misleading. Certainly union density
brings along all sorts of improved conditions for all
workers. But on its own, it is not a complete measure of
labor movement vitality. L.A. is often held up as a model of
a progressive city, with a strong labor movement, but its
union density is lower than New York and Chicago.

What is unique about L.A. is that activists and leaders have
learned the lessons that the organizing that workers centers
do is necessary but not sufficient to build a strong local
labor movement in the same way that the organizing that
unions do under current state regulatory frameworks cannot on
its own rebuild the labor movement.

In other words, unions have one role and workers centers have
another in building a movement that changes conditions of
work for all workers. To ignore that lesson because of some
doctrinaire version of what organizing is and isn't is beyond
counterproductive.

= = =

But Is It Organizing? by Bob Roman was posted by portside on
December 15,2010, and can be read by using the link below -
portside moderator.

http://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/but-is-it-organizing/

 

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