The bi-annual Labor Notes conferences have become perhaps the most important gathering places for the left in the labor movement. For example, over 3,000 union activists attended the last conference in 2019. Those attending included most of the main leaders of the teachers’ strike wave of that year, a strong contingent of blue collar workers, and a large number of international guests. The 2020 and 2021 conferences were sensibly cancelled due to the pandemic. The next in-person conference has been scheduled for March of 2022. Labor Notes decided to fill the void left by these cancellations by holding twelve online meetings over the month of April. These meetings created a sort of online conference known as the “April  Month of Trouble Making.” The purpose of this article is to report on these meetings. Taken together, they provide a useful picture of the activities and viewpoints of the left in the trade unions today.

Stress in the white collar workplace

The first session focused on Sarah Jaffe’s book Your Job Won’t Love You Back. Two of Sarah’s points set the theme for the evening. The first is that deindustrialization had led to the decline of trade unionism in the former industrial strongholds, making the public sector and social services now the most important sectors for organized labor. Secondly, Sarah argued that during the radicalization of the 1960s, the Italian social movements had developed a two part critique of capitalism. There was the “social” critique—exploitation, working conditions, etc. There was also an “artistic” critique—alienation, boredom, etc.

These points set the framework for the meeting. Marxists would approach these issues from a different point of view. Nevertheless, an interesting discussion took place on an important topic. The discussion focused on alienation and stress in white collar workplaces. Managers who“kiss up and kick down,” irrational work procedures, stressful workloads, rampant sexism, and a boiler room atmosphere dominate many white collar workplaces. This creates serious alienation and dissatisfaction among the workers. This is one aspect of what has been called the proletarianization of intellectual labor. One noticeable feature of this process is employer demands for greater worker productivity due to management’s refusal to hire the necessary number of workers needed to do the job effectively. Many offices have electronic supervision of workers’ time and output that would put the factory supervisors in Das Kapital to shame.

A valuable contribution was made by Nantina Vgontzas, a leader of the graduate students’ union at NYU. She explained the economic and emotional pressures in the academic world where getting ahead and intense competition for few jobs dominate the environment.

It’s clear that emotional stress in white collar workplaces has economic causes and roots. Workers driven into the action by the atmosphere in colleges and offices are an important component of a labor fightback.                   

Caucuses inside union: beginning to build the opposition

Militants have a straightforward situation when they are members of adversarial and democratic unions. They become active supporters of the union and its struggles. They have no need to build any new organization to force the union to stand up to the employers. For example, there’s no need for forcing the United Electrical union to stand up for its members. It’s already doing it.

The problem is when, as is often the case, the union is collaborating with the employers instead of fighting them. Then union activists will need to turn to building a caucus, or internal opposition current, inside of the union. The most successful example of this is the Teamsters for a Democratic Union in the IBT. Substantial oppositions have built in school teachers unions, particularly in Chicago and Los Angeles. Rank and file members of the UAW are today campaigning for direct election of top officers.

Caucuses were the topic of the April 16 session of the conference. There were speakers from four caucuses: the Membership Action Caucus (MAC) in the New York UUP in the SUNY university system, letter carriers in Portland, Philadelphia school teachers, and CWA Local 1168, which represents healthcare workers in Buffalo. The size of these caucuses varies greatly. Some of the MAC groups are just starting out, while reformers are in the leadership of CWA 1168. The largest group attending the workshop appeared to be from higher education unions. It would have been very worthwhile to have had a speaker from TDU.

Some participants argued that the caucus should attempt to do the organizing that the official union is not doing. A better way of posing it would be to say that our objective is to win over the ranks of the union. Once the union moves into action against  the employer, it is far more effective than a caucus could be. Ron Carey could not have led the 1997 UPS strike or CORE the Chicago teachers strikes if they were not at the helm of the union itself. Of course, one has to be flexible about this. An opposition caucus’s contract campaign, for example, might well both help draw the rank and file into action and serve as a practical example of an alternative approach to that of the leadership.

The same overall point applies to the questions of placing demands on the existing leadership. At the workshop, some activists put forward the view that we should not call for the current leadership to do things, but instead do them ourselves. Calling upon the incumbents to take the necessary actions to further the union’s objectives can often be a very useful means of entering into a discussion with supporters of the current union leadership. Winning  these workers to a fighting perspective is obviously a crucial part of the caucus’s work.

Secrets of a Successful Organizer

The conference offered a special track of three sessions based on the Labor Notes book Secrets of a Successful Organizer. These workshops involved a fair degree of audience participation. Each one was therefore offered twice so that the workshop size would be not unwieldy.

Fear of employer retaliation

The first session, “Beating Apathy,” was ably led by Labor Notes staffer Joe DeManuelle-Hall. Joe focused on four points: How do unions generally resolve problems with management? How can we  precisely assess the situation in a workplace? What is holding back workers’ activity in the workplace? How should activists talk with workers who they are trying to draw into activity?

The workshop made very successful use of online techniques such as breakout groups with changing participants and instant polling. One point emerged very clearly from the discussion. Worker fear of employer retaliation is a very strong factor in this country today. Many participants saw it as the main obstacle to increased involvement in union activity and fightback. Workers are not being irrational or paranoid here. Bosses certainly will take action against worker militancy. Employer self-confidence has increased as the labor movement has weakened. Reversing this balance of forces is the way to protect union activists from employer attacks.

Mapping the workplace when there is no workplace

Joe DeManuelle-Hall continued his successful leading of the Secrets of a Successful Organizer track in the second session, “Assembling Your Dream Team.” This session focused on two topics—identifying natural leaders in the workplace and mapping the workplace. The discussion on identifying leaders was really a discussion of the qualities and skills needed to be a successful union activist.

Mapping the workplace is an activity that Labor Notes has promoted for a long time. It is the name of a procedure for activists to carefully identify the myriad of racial, gender, age, skill, job and friendship groupings that exist in the workplace. Armed with this knowledge, activists are better able to understand and mobilize their co-workers. It’s a useful way of systematizing the knowledge that activists generally have a pretty good grasp of.

The workshop took up a crucial new twist on this activity. How do you map the workplace where there is no one central physical location which all the workers report to? The growth of gig, app, and delivery work make this an important question. Capitalist reorganizing of the workplace means more and more workers do not work all day in the same workplace. One group of workers at the meeting explained that they are all permanently out on the road and never come together in one location.

This dispersal makes the collectivity and cohesion needed for working class action much harder to achieve than in, for example, a mining town. It makes it harder, but it doesn’t make it impossible.  Working class unity and strength can be forged under the new forms of work. One organizer spoke of friendship groups emerging even among high turnover temporary workers at Amazon. One of the best organized groups of workers in this country are the UPS package car and feeder drivers. However, after an initial start at the warehouse, these Teamsters  are on the road by themselves. Teamster organizers have developed the tactics and means to create a sense of unity and solidarity among these workers. This shows that organizing in the new workplace is certainly something that the labor movement can be capable of.

The next installments in this series will report on further workshops and draw some overall conclusions.