Organized Labour and the Occupations Movement 
by Samir Sonti

The   B u l l e t 	Socialist Project 
E-Bulletin No. 564 November 3, 2011

http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/564.php#continue

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) phenomenon has achieved a
stature and longevity unrivaled by recent
demonstrations in the United States, and has
understandably struck a chord with a wide range of
people dismayed by the barbaric level of inequality
that is the defining feature of contemporary American
society. As the small encampment in lower Manhattan has
swelled and spread to cities across the country, the
rallying cry of the "99%" has at least momentarily
introduced the mainstream discourse to a conception of
class, which is usually missing from the political
theater showcased on corporate news outlets. The risks
posed by an over-reliance on mass media coverage
notwithstanding, the organizers' ability to attract the
public eye has been impressive and is an encouraging
reminder that most people are yearning for a political
vision that resonates with the material anxieties they
feel. As the most brutal economic crisis in over a
generation grinds on for the third consecutive year,
perhaps most surprising is that it has taken so long
for such an upsurge to occur. Chicago police arrest
members of National Nurses United

Chicago police arrest members of National Nurses
United, and tear down their first aid tent at Occupy
Chicago. [Photo: National United Nurses.] Staying
Power?

However, while an inner-core of participants may remain
for months, with time the size of the direct
occupations will likely wane and media attention will
slowly gravitate to more profitable ventures. The
travesty that unfolded in Wisconsin over the past ten
months should serve as a painful reminder of that
inevitability. And though the moment's political
salience may briefly persist, it will be fleeting
unless anchored in something more durable than a
demonstration, throwing into sharp relief the need for
a level of organization that can sustain and expand
upon the Occupy energy.

The slogan of the "99%" may have tremendous rhetorical
currency, but history shows that there is no shortcut
to the long-term, painstaking task of generating a real
movement: meeting people where they are, building trust
and struggling with them over the issues they're
worried about, connecting those anxieties to a coherent
political program, and consolidating those efforts into
a force to be reckoned with. While many of the Occupy
working groups may be beginning this project, most of
the millions who constitute the "99%" have been unable
or unwilling to participate and need to be reached by
some other means. OWS can be an opportunity to start
this process, but it is not a spark that will spread on
its own. Years of Struggle

Here the civil rights movement, which is often invoked
in relation to OWS, is instructive. Unmentioned in most
grade school lore on the subject, the struggle for
racial justice grew out of a deeply rooted
organizational apparatus that had been constructed
through decades of diligent labour and community
organizing. Rosa Parks was a seasoned activist who had
been trained at the legendary leftist organizing
academy, the Highlander Folk School, and Martin Luther
King Jr. owes his beginnings to veteran trade unionists
who recruited him. No miracles initiated this historic
fight; it was planned and executed by individuals and
their organizations who through years of struggle in
pursuit of concrete demands had cultivated powerful
bases of support in specific communities.

Weakened though they may be, and with all the
limitations of their sedentary bureaucracies, unions
are still the most democratic membership organizations
in the United States, with established activists and
infrastructures in cities across the country that
possess the practical skills and resources necessary to
carry on the fight...

Only through following this long-term organizing
approach can OWS begin to harness the anger and energy
it has made visible and translate it in into a dynamic,
class-conscious movement. And only the labour movement
has the experience and organizational capacity to take
on the challenge. Weakened though they may be, and with
all the limitations of their sedentary bureaucracies,
unions are still the most democratic membership
organizations in the United States, with established
activists and infrastructures in cities across the
country that possess the practical skills and resources
necessary to carry on the fight, particularly when it
becomes less visibly exciting. Though union density has
precipitously declined in recent decades, still today
millions of people have experienced real improvements
in their lives through workplace struggles led by
existing labour unions, a much larger and more
representative cross-section of the population than is
likely to turn out at any "Occupy" event.

It's important to remember that historically, organized
labour has been the most effective vehicle for
challenging economic inequality; it is an empirical
reality that when unions are weak wealth concentrates
in the hands of the few, and when they're strong it is
at least a bit more evenly distributed. A recent study
demonstrated that between 1973 and 2007 private sector
unionization decreased by over 75 per cent and
inequality increased by 40 per cent. In this spirit,
OWS might best be considered as an opportunity to push
the mainstream labour movement toward a more aggressive
organizing strategy and, hopefully, an alternative
political vision.

Rank-and-file militants in a variety of unions have
engaged in this grueling project for decades, with some
successes and many setbacks, and perhaps the most
encouraging feature of OWS is the space it might create
for more work of this sort. However, an opportunity is
only as valuable as the concrete steps taken to
capitalize on it, and unless the strategic thinking
needed to orient and initiate that process begins in
earnest, this wave of activism will likely join the
recent anti-globalization and immigrants' rights
demonstrations in the annals of modern left history
while neoliberalism continues its plunder unscathed.

A number of unions have taken up the OWS mantle and
some inspiring labour-community partnerships have grown
out of it. The New York City Transport Workers Union
(TWU) Local 100 was an early supporter, and even went
to court to prevent police from ordering union drivers
to bus arrested demonstrators to jail. The National
Nurses United (NNU), one of the most progressive and
militant unions, has been present at occupations around
the country administering flu shots and providing basic
medical assistance. And the courageous art handlers of
Teamsters Local 814 who have been locked-out of
Sotheby's auction house - a quintessential symbol of
the "1%" - have cultivated a remarkable level of
solidarity with the New York occupation, turning out
bus loads to their rallies and gaining international
attention in the process.

These three examples represent elements of the most
dynamic and forward-looking wing of an otherwise rather
glacial labour establishment that always seems to be on
the defensive. The best chance OWS has to become the
kind of force necessary to win a more just society lies
in following their lead. *

Samir Sonti is a graduate student at Cornell. He has
worked for SEIU. This article first appeared on the
Viewpoint Magazine website.

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