Speaker 1: All Zone Media. Welcome to a special May Day episode
Speaker 1: of vicd app and here I'm your host, Mia Wong.
Speaker 1: It wasn't too long ago that unions were finished. The
Speaker 1: percentage of American workers in unions plunged towards the single digits.
Speaker 1: The unions that survived, battered and broken shells of the
Speaker 1: mighty behemists that shook the world for one hundred years,
Speaker 1: embraced so called business unionism, which set out not to
Speaker 1: conquer the world in the name of labor like its
Speaker 1: great predecessors, or even really to bargain for higher wages,
Speaker 1: but to make companies profitable in order to keep their jobs.
Speaker 1: They took pay cuts and job losses without a fight,
Speaker 1: forcing their membership into line, and effortlessly crushing the endless
Speaker 1: slates of reform caucuses that sought to put the fight
Speaker 1: back into the working class. Even the cutting edge of
Speaker 1: Marxist theory, health time of unions was over. Workers were
Speaker 1: too adomized, too divided, too far from the immediate processes
Speaker 1: of production, from the discipline of the factory, and from
Speaker 1: the massification of the city. To assemble the working class
Speaker 1: in its old fighting form, there would be riots, To
Speaker 1: be sure, barricades, blockades, occupations, but not strikes. Whatever the
Speaker 1: working class did next, the age of the union was
Speaker 1: over for much of the twenty tens. That prediction was
Speaker 1: a smart bet. The bold proclamation of Wisconsin trade unionists
Speaker 1: that organized labor would turn back the tide of the
Speaker 1: CHEA Party failed to ruin under the failure of their
Speaker 1: attempt to recall Wisconsin's hated union busting governor Scott Walker.
Speaker 1: The CHA Party's march continued unimpeded, radicalizing even further in
Speaker 1: the wake of the twenty fourteen twenty fifteen uprisings Ferguson
Speaker 1: in Baltimore to produce not the victory of the working
Speaker 1: class but Donald Trump. Even success stories like the rejuvenation
Speaker 1: of the mighty Chicago Teachers Union AFT Local one by
Speaker 1: a bold reform caucus called the Caucus of Rank and
Speaker 1: File Educators or Corps, who waged a pair of unexpectedly
Speaker 1: wildly popular strikes, was tainted by the reality of limited
Speaker 1: wins and labor conditions in Chicago schools that remained appalling.
Speaker 1: Even as the left returned in the wake of Occupy
Speaker 1: Ferguson and the election of Trump, union membership continued to plunge,
Speaker 1: and capitalists and Marxist alike continued to herald the union's demise.
Speaker 1: They were wrong. History, it seems, delights in irony. It
Speaker 1: was the dead enders, fighting hopeless battles and reform caucuses,
Speaker 1: losing union election after union election. It was the Wobbles Fire,
Speaker 1: losing campaign after losing campaign, desperately trying to organize the
Speaker 1: unorganizable fast food and retail workers. It was rank and
Speaker 1: file Marxist trade unionists waiting sixty long years, their comrades
Speaker 1: dead and gone, for somebody, anybody, to hear their plans
Speaker 1: for shutting down Capitol's logistics networks. It was Labor Notes,
Speaker 1: sixteen staffers compiling endless analyzes of labor struggles for a
Speaker 1: crowd that couldn't have filled a baseball stadium. Who was right?
Speaker 1: Unions are back, While still small compared to the height
Speaker 1: of union power in the nineteen fifties, twenty twenty three
Speaker 1: saw a wave of massively popular strikes waged by unions
Speaker 1: from the massive behemoths like the UAW in the Writers
Speaker 1: Guild to tiny independent coffee unions whose members. Larger existing
Speaker 1: unions are rather spin on than spend a single cent
Speaker 1: attempting to organize. Only the director intervention of the President
Speaker 1: to break a rail workers strike before it could start,
Speaker 1: and the last second portrayal of Teamster's leadership stops twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three from being this largest strikewave of the modern era.
Speaker 1: Basking in his triumphs and conspiring to win more was
Speaker 1: labor Notes. Labor Notes is a curious beast. It is
Speaker 1: simultaneously a journal that publishes news about labor struggles, a
Speaker 1: network that brings together a group of disparate rank and
Speaker 1: file union reform movements largely but not exclusively from the US,
Speaker 1: maintaining a strong emphasis on solidarity and organizing with workers
Speaker 1: in Mexico, and a labor conference that runs every two years.
Speaker 1: It is a relic of another time, whose time it seems,
Speaker 1: has come again. Labor Notes was founded in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: nine as a way to coordinate and expand the interunion
Speaker 1: connections formed to the United Mine Workers of America's nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine bituminous coal strike. It's one of the last
Speaker 1: direct connections to the era where labor was strong unwittingly
Speaker 1: tasked with keeping the flame of labor alive during the
Speaker 1: neoliberal downpour, Two weeks ago, they held their largest conference
Speaker 1: ever FO Five hundred people crammed into the Wyatt Regency
Speaker 1: next to Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. At least a thousand
Speaker 1: people who tried to register were turned down. I personally
Speaker 1: watched interested workers turned away at the door because the
Speaker 1: venue's conference halls had already reached the mass capacity for
Speaker 1: fire safety. Labor we can safely say is back. It
Speaker 1: is returning to the South the great rock unions have
Speaker 1: shattered upon for one hundred years. It's moving in new
Speaker 1: directions towards service workers previously thought impossible to organize. Most
Speaker 1: of all, it's moving towards something we'd almost forgotten was possible.
Speaker 1: It's moving towards victory. The first thing you noticed about
Speaker 1: Labor Notes is it's staggering diversity. Young punks and battle
Speaker 1: jackets sat on benches next to old anti war protesters
Speaker 1: from the sixties. Independent trade unionists and feminist activists in
Speaker 1: Mexico rubbed shoulders with battle hearted American union nurses. White
Speaker 1: middle aged longshore men and women plotted with young, queer
Speaker 1: Amazon warehouse workers to maximize the power of logistics strikes.
Speaker 1: You saw old industrial organizers from the sixties, passing down
Speaker 1: lessons and tactics and stories of strikes that otherwise would
Speaker 1: have vanished into the mists of history. Media workers fighting
Speaker 1: for their first contract, the lowliest rank and file workers
Speaker 1: chatting in breakout groups with union presidents. For all the
Speaker 1: talk I've done in this show about how many union
Speaker 1: organizers are trans, even I didn't expect to see this
Speaker 1: many trans people, It's a cross section of the American
Speaker 1: working class come to fight, and that, above all, is
Speaker 1: what this Labor Notes conference was about. Fighting. The most
Speaker 1: direct conflict came on the first day of the conference,
Speaker 1: when Palestinian union activists called for a pro Palestine demonstration
Speaker 1: outside the hotel. The cops arrested three people in an
Speaker 1: attempt to clear the street. This, rather predictably, was a
Speaker 1: terrible idea. Instead of backing down, the crowd of several
Speaker 1: hundred union activists almost immediately surrounded the lone car and
Speaker 1: demanded they let their prisoner go. What happened next, to
Speaker 1: use a technical term, fucking ripped. A bunch of kids
Speaker 1: had a rave to the changing police sirens. A fifty
Speaker 1: year old white dude from the electrical worker stood next
Speaker 1: to me, a Chinese Transzoman from a podcast union, a
Speaker 1: bunch of longshore men, teamsters, staffers from unions. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: believe even if I told you Palestinian trade union activists,
Speaker 1: nurses punkt from independent unions. No one else in the
Speaker 1: crowd could have named. An entire mass of unionists stood
Speaker 1: their ground and refused to let the cops take one
Speaker 1: of ours. A tradeswoman with drums marched around the police
Speaker 1: car and we're all saying, which side are you on?
Speaker 1: After two hours, the police gave up to a crowd
Speaker 1: screaming Union power at the top of our lungs. It
Speaker 1: was an incredible display of solidarity that set the tone
Speaker 1: for the rest of the event. We were going to
Speaker 1: fight the bosses together and fuck them if they came
Speaker 1: for us. This is not to say there weren't divisions.
Speaker 1: A group of protesters broke away from the cop car
Speaker 1: to demand that Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, the darling of
Speaker 1: the Chicago Teachers' Union, come tell the cops to let
Speaker 1: our people go. Now. Whether or not this would have
Speaker 1: worked is up to some debates. These cops were not
Speaker 1: Chicago police departments. They were the cops of Rosemont which
Speaker 1: is technically a separate entity from the city of Chicago. However,
Speaker 1: Labor Notes staffers and securities tried to stop the protesters
Speaker 1: from reaching Brandon Johnson and ended up throwing punches at
Speaker 1: the protesters. As to quote one observer, union brother fought
Speaker 1: union brother. This fight reveals one of the important tensions
Speaker 1: in the movement. Should unions continue to back imperfect center
Speaker 1: left politicians in exchange for some political benefits, or should
Speaker 1: they take a hard line against politicians who betray their
Speaker 1: fundamental political principles. Brandon Johnson is a microcosm of the debate.
Speaker 1: On the one hand, he was elected with enormous resource
Speaker 1: expenditure from the Chicago teachers' unions. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: he's been locking immigrants into berculosis ridden camps as the
Speaker 1: city lurches from crisis to crisis. Even many of Chicago's
Speaker 1: other unionists were never happy with with him in the
Speaker 1: first place, as he failed to use his previous position
Speaker 1: to come to the aid of striking nurses. When the
Speaker 1: two points of view collide, there's a fight on a
Speaker 1: national level. The conflict is the question of Joe Biden
Speaker 1: in Palestine. At Labor Notes itself, there's strong support for Palestine.
Speaker 1: Palestinian solidarity panels were packed to the rafters with workers
Speaker 1: from every sector imaginable and activists from across the world.
Speaker 1: I saw UAW workers deeply unhappy with their union leadership's
Speaker 1: decision to endorse Biden, a decision made by maybe five
Speaker 1: members of an executive committee with how to vote from
Speaker 1: the union. Theren lies the issue, as much as Labor notes,
Speaker 1: represents the bleeding edge of the labor movements. UAW president
Speaker 1: Sean Fein, fresh off the uaw's astounding seventy three percent
Speaker 1: victory at a Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga, gave the conference's
Speaker 1: closing address. The remain means massive bastions of conservatism and
Speaker 1: the labor movement, who have actively fought against even statements
Speaker 1: on Palestine, much less concrete actions. Unions are still weak
Speaker 1: and the positions of activists within them are still tenuous.
Speaker 1: Even more favorable shops have yet to turn broader popular
Speaker 1: support among rank and file workers for Palestine into substantive
Speaker 1: strike actions, and it's deeply unclear to me if any
Speaker 1: such action is possible at all. My pessimism on labour's
Speaker 1: willingness and ability to stop the genocide in Palestine, a
Speaker 1: pessimism reinforced by watching the rapid spread of student campus
Speaker 1: occupations while labor remains silent or perhaps more precisely dormant,
Speaker 1: is broadly intention with my optimism and effectively everything else
Speaker 1: that I saw there. There was incredible organizing going on
Speaker 1: at labor notes. People are coordinating rank and file links
Speaker 1: between unions whose staffers and leaderships hate each other for
Speaker 1: grudges whose origins have passed into the mists of time.
Speaker 1: There was quite serious talk about plans to line up
Speaker 1: contracts to expire in twenty twenty eight to effectively create
Speaker 1: a miniature general strike, or perhaps more precisely, to create
Speaker 1: a version of what's called the Spring offensive in Japan.
Speaker 1: Spring and offensive are the same word in Japanese, and
Speaker 1: so labor unions decided to have their contracts expire in
Speaker 1: the spring, thus maximizing the power of their strikes. This
Speaker 1: effort to have contracts aligned in twenty twenty eight is
Speaker 1: broadly speaking, a larger version of the Spring Offensive. We
Speaker 1: will cover this more in a later episode. For now,
Speaker 1: I think it's enough to say that this cushions and
Speaker 1: organization were quite serious, and there was significant enthusiasm, as
Speaker 1: well as discussions of the potential difficulties of getting people's
Speaker 1: contracts to actually align. People are organizing to bring their
Speaker 1: unions together on a sectoral base to share resources, coordinate,
Speaker 1: set standards for contracts, and generally help each other more
Speaker 1: effectively oppose the bosses and unions that rule them all.
Speaker 1: Labor Notes has also from the beginning been an incubator
Speaker 1: for reform movements inside of unions, attempting to rest control
Speaker 1: from corporate administrative caucuses. These reform movements almost always lose.
Speaker 1: The last fifty years is littered with defeats in union
Speaker 1: election after union election with sub ten percent turnout, and
Speaker 1: yet little by little, these groups are starting to win.
Speaker 1: We heard from a number of smaller rank and file
Speaker 1: efforts that had successfully taken control of their unionians. The
Speaker 1: first major victory was a rank and file slate taking
Speaker 1: over the management of notoriously corrupt Clickish Teamsters. Now I
Speaker 1: have my issues with the new Teamsters leadership too. There
Speaker 1: are something like two entire hours of this show dedicated
Speaker 1: to how angry rank and file teamsters were over the
Speaker 1: fact that UPS workers didn't go on strike last year
Speaker 1: due to their leadership cutting a deal with management. But
Speaker 1: on a broader level, the victory of the Teamsters reformed
Speaker 1: slates and the defeat of one of the oldest union
Speaker 1: I don't know if administrative caucus.
Speaker 2: Is really a that's a bit of a euphemism for
Speaker 2: the ups sort of corrupt leadership, dictatorship, but their victory
Speaker 2: on a broader level was a sea change in American unionism.
Speaker 1: Their victory was followed by the victory of Sean Fain
Speaker 1: in the UAW, a man who, as much as he's
Speaker 1: angered members by endorsing Joe Biden walked into Labor Notes
Speaker 1: and gave a speech about the class war and the
Speaker 1: authoritarianism of corporate greed. Certainly there was much to annoy
Speaker 1: trade activists concerned with Palestine in the sense that his
Speaker 1: central metaphor labor was the arsenal of democracy. Was in
Speaker 1: bad taste as he described the unions that he leads
Speaker 1: as the successors of Liberator B fifty two bombers, which not,
Speaker 1: you know, not precisely the metaphor ed shoes, as your
Speaker 1: own members are protesting the bombs following over Gaza. But
Speaker 1: on the other hand, if a giant speech about the
Speaker 1: class war and the need to organize across borders is
Speaker 1: now the conservative wing of progressor trade unionism. The future
Speaker 1: is bright. The kind of militant union actions we've seen
Speaker 1: over the past year have coalesced into a sort of
Speaker 1: strategy of fight as you build. It is based on
Speaker 1: a very basic strategy that you would think unions would
Speaker 1: have already been doing. However, Comma, see everything I've ever
Speaker 1: said about administration, administrative caucuses, and business unionism and corporate unionism.
Speaker 1: The strategy is, if you win things for people, more
Speaker 1: of them will join unions. This strategy is already bearing
Speaker 1: fruit in Chattanooga and has international implications as well. We
Speaker 1: heard from organizers that workers in Mexico and China were
Speaker 1: keenly watching the UAW strikes, and for good reason. These
Speaker 1: strikes are ultimately their fight too, and slowly but surely
Speaker 1: workers across the world are starting to realize it. The
Speaker 1: degree of Internet nationalism at this labrynes was remarkable. I
Speaker 1: came into an early China panel fully expecting the same
Speaker 1: kinds of praise for the CCP that I've seen in
Speaker 1: other leftist events held in the city of Chicago, most recently,
Speaker 1: the sort of fiasco China panel held at Socialism Conference
Speaker 1: that degraded into an argument about whether or not Brazil, Russia, India,
Speaker 1: China and South Africa socialist. Here there was none of that.
Speaker 1: For sure, there were some slightly weird German maoist defending
Speaker 1: the Cultural Revolution, but on the other hand, there wasn't
Speaker 1: any defense of Chinese capitalism or their failed bankrupt model
Speaker 1: of corporate unionism. On top of cross border organizing sectorially,
Speaker 1: the conference has a deep and ingrained pro immigrant position.
Speaker 1: Sean Fayn is probably the most high profile political figure
Speaker 1: I've seen actually discussing the horrific treatment of migrants at
Speaker 1: the border right now and taking time to remind everyone
Speaker 1: that immigrants are just workers trying to find a better life. This, however,
Speaker 1: makes his support for Joe Biden, the butcher of Yakumba,
Speaker 1: even more questionable. Still, you can see the wheels of
Speaker 1: history turning. You can see it there in the muffled
Speaker 1: buzz of conversations drifting through hallways, in the roar of
Speaker 1: the cheering crowd, in the bright laughs of co conspirators
Speaker 1: who moments before were strangers, and the drowsy chatter of
Speaker 1: abortion workers who let a transwoman sleep on their floor
Speaker 1: to hide from the police in the chance of one
Speaker 1: hundred workers refusing to let the cops take one of
Speaker 1: their own. You can see the outline of the great Leviathan,
Speaker 1: the ruling class thought buried stone dead in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: You can see the working class waking from its day's slumber,
Speaker 1: shaking the sleep from its eyes and the dirt from
Speaker 1: its back for the first time in decades. Hear the
Speaker 1: clatter and the roar as it tests its chains. The
Speaker 1: great behemoth is beginning, just beginning, to assemble the ironwill
Speaker 1: and terrible power necessary to turn its dreams into reality,
Speaker 1: to break its chains and shatter its cage, and reclaim
Speaker 1: the world it built with its blood and sweat and tears.
Speaker 1: That day is not today, it's not tomorrow, but for
Speaker 1: the first time in my life, it could be the
Speaker 1: day after that this has been It could happen here.
Speaker 1: Happy Mayday, everyone, It could happen here. As a production
Speaker 1: of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us
Speaker 1: out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to podcasts. You can find sources for it could
Speaker 1: happen here. Updated monthly at cool zone Media Com Slash Sources,
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.