The Limits of the Union Organization
Unions are great for gathering, building, maintaining, and wielding solidarity. There’s a centripetal force to the organization’s energy that keeps it focused singularly on its mission. Its cause is impressive: representing workers’ interests, gaining resources for those workers, and propelling the cause of labor forward. Unions are a time-tested organizational form going back to the mid-19th century, although it’s enjoyed a number of important innovations since that time.
Nonetheless, like all organizations, there’s always the potential for goal-displacement—what was originally the mission of the union may fade to the background, to be replaced by a new goal. Unions were originally ways of protecting craft workers from the onslaught of capitalist expansion. They soon after became tools for empowering workers to actively fight against those capitalist forces, often with the aim of defeating capitalism on behalf of a new, more equal system (variously termed “socialism”, “democracy”, or “utopia”). Radical variants were spawned to represent all workers, regardless of occupation or demographic characteristics. Later transformations in the 20th century saw the rise of “business unionism”, where the anti-capitalist goals of fighting the bosses and the struggle for a free working class, were traded for basic workplace concessions for union members (and them alone). Working class solidarity was abandoned, as was the dream of a radically-different future.
The conciliatory nature of business unionism inadvertently led to a de-fanged union movement which hesitated to use its main weapon (the strike) and instead depended upon its legal cunning at the bargaining table to achieve compromises with their employers. This occurred for both private-sector and public-sector unions in the United States, although the former lost more since the deindustrialization that began in the 1960s and when Reaganinsm kicked-in during the 1980s. The latter—public-sector unions—gained considerable ground during that same time period, thanks to advantageous legal decisions. But both types of unions generally preferred labor defensiveness and passivity, while attempting to regain some of the former unionized density the movement previously enjoyed. Working within the legal system, campaigning for Democratic Party politicians, and lobbying for advantageous policy became a major objective for many national unions.
But, the labor movement grew the most during past moments of tumult. Unionization was rapid, riding the wave of daring strike campaigns. According to Dan Clawson’s The Next Upsurge, experimental forms and daring strategies are what hold the most promise for the labor movement, not more of the same business unionism. Labor must abandon the idea that only its members are important. Strikes should be bold and inspire passion, sweeping-up those who were recently unconvinced of its merits. Strike waves ought to be encouraged, spreading discontent from workplace to workplace, employer to employer, industry to industry. Class consciousness is like a contagious disease—it’s spread when those who are “infected” bring it into immediate contact with as many people as possible.
Union struggles cannot remain just labor conflicts, reduced to banal workplace demands. If unions are to remain relevant, they must continue to broad their scope beyond parochial concerns of a single workplace to the rest of civil society; unions thus must be antiracist and antifascist, they must center feminist values, they must take seriously the abolitionist opposition to carceral society, and they must be decolonialist. Intersectionality isn’t a buzzword, it’s the rocket-fuel that will make labor and class issues salient with people for whom those issues matter most.
When unions fail to deliver on their promises, which they sometimes do, or when leadership is more willing to shake-hands with the bosses than to fight them, workers must transcend the union. This might mean creating a new union alongside the old, or at least creating radical factions within the existing union to keep it on its original mission of winning a better world. Historically “union flying squads” were groups of committed militants who went beyond the reformist impulses the union organization pursued; they provided solidarity and mutual aid where it was lacking, kept their radical eyes “on the prize” of a transformed society, and weren’t afraid to act autonomously among their fellow union members if need be, to push the struggle forward.
It’s hard to believe that such an old organizational form would be able to continue to provide what was necessary in the 21st century. If the current union form can’t accomplish what is needed, because the world has changed or because it is hobbled by legalistic quicksand, then the labor movement must adapt. The union doesn’t need to be abandoned, but it must both rediscover its radical original purpose, as well as foresee what it needs to become to win the future.