STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Wednesday, 26 December 2012

[Demeter]

9. 6 Ways to Juice Up the Labor Movement

http://www.alternet.org/6-ways-juice-labor-movement?akid=9855.227380.fHHeIE&rd=1&src=newsletter766654&t=7&paging=off

...While Michigan's unions regroup and begin the twin processes of trying to survive and retain dues-paying members in the face of RTW and trying to find a way to overturn the law, it's clear that the national labor movement needs to do more than just fight defensive battle after defensive battle. To kick-start a conversation, AlterNet spoke with several of the smartest organizers and labor thinkers we know, and asked them for their suggestions on how labor can go on the offensive in the next year.

1. Stephen Lerner, architect of the Justice for Janitors campaign: “It's time to reinvent the strike—the strike as guerrilla warfare"...in his work with Justice for Janitors, Lerner learned that bosses weren't ready for short, quick strikes. “If you look at the strike as a way to make them pay a price for how they treat you, you do short strikes, in and out strikes,” he notes. “Part of the reason it's so difficult to organize workers now is most people work multiple jobs, they have not a moment to participate. If you view the strike as having multiple goals, one is it allows workers to publicly declare and demonstrate they're unhappy. Second, because they're not at work they can talk to the media, go to churches. Third, it's something very concrete that they can do that does start to make the bosses a little crazy.”
   
   The second thing Lerner suggests is a re-politicization of bargaining. “We need bargaining not to just be about workers but what's good for the community,” he says, “So that we're bargaining for broader issues, especially in the public sector. So that it's not bargaining for the few, it's bargaining for the many.” Chicago's teachers, he notes, raised the issue of the city divesting from banks that were foreclosing on people. “We need to make it so that people see that when those workers win, we all win, rather than they're negotiating for something we don't have.”
   
   
2. Jonathan Westin, executive director, New York Communities for Change, organizer of recent fast food strikes: “We believe that the future of the labor movement is really organizing low wage service sector jobs. These are the jobs we're stuck with, we need to make them livable jobs,” says Westin, whose organization, despite not being a labor union, has been organizing low-wage workers across New York City, from McDonald's and Wendy's to grocery stores and car washes. It's not just about who you're organizing, Westin notes, it's also about how you do it. “It's about constantly pressuring employers from as many angles as possible. It's leveraging not only NLRB elections but back wage claims to pressure the employers, leveraging community pressure, boycotts, strikes. We did a strike at the car wash in the Bronx and they came to the table. That's the lesson, it's not just any one strategy, you have to come at them at every different angle.”
   
   SO MUCH MORE! ANOTHER READ AND BOOKMARK