Labor Research Review, Volume 1, Number 24 (1996)
Permanent URI for this collection
Labor Research Review, Volume 1, Number 24 (1996)
Tough Questions, Fresh Ideas, and New Models: Fuel for the New Labor Movement
Browse
Recent Submissions
Item "I Think the Unions Beat Me": The 1995 Kentucky Governor's RaceMatuszak, Michael (1996-06-01)[Excerpt]The Kentucky election is one in which organized labor grappled with this dilemma and discovered that the democratic tools of education, coalition building, and organizing, which are the keys to building a strong labor movement, can also play a key role in winning elections.Item Multi-Union Organizing: Speech by David Sickler 12/7/95 at UCLASickler, David (1996-06-01){Excerpt} Multi-union organizing is my favorite subject. As a regional director of the AFL-CIO, I have to spin a lot of plates in the air, but organizing is the thing that I'm interested in the most. It's what I volunteered to do as an activist member of my own local union back in the 60s. And for many years it's the key thing I have felt is missing in the whole national labor movement agenda. Not just in the AFL-CIO, but as a priority for all of our international unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO. So the question that is central for the labor movement right now is—Can unions work together?Item LRR Focus: An Old Alliance From a Global Angle(1996-06-01)[Excerpt] The alliance between labor and the church is not only one of the oldest relationships in the US; it is also one of the most potent. Even in Puritan New England, according to Jama Lazerov's Religion and the Working Class in Antebellum America, many labor activists were "spurred on by the pious pronouncements of sympathetic clergy people." Saul Alinsky's, Let Them Call Me Rebel, recounts how key church leaders rendered great assistance to the striking packinghouse workers in Chicago after the Second World War. More recently, we see the strong presence of the church within labor and community industrial retention efforts such as the Naugatuck Valley Project and the Tri-State Conference on Steel.Item Making Labor A Powerful Force: The Role of the CBTUAdams, Larry (1996-06-01)[Excerpt] An Interview with Brenda Stokely by Larry Adams, concerning the AFL-CIO Full Participation Conference and moking the rhetoric of "inclusion" ond "diversity" in organized labor into a reality.Item Beyond the Activist: Steward-As-EducatorMallett, Daniel (1996-06-01)[Excerpt] The Education Advisory Committee, the longest standing committee of the Canadian Labor Congress, met in 1994 to deliberate on issues of vital importance to the future of trade union education within the Canadian labor movement. At the time, the participants did not realize that their deliberations would determine our movement's direction in education until the year 2000. Discussions ranged from how we can coordinate the development and sharing of education materials, offer more schools and educational activities, use new technology in the area of distance education, and build more resources to further our education work. In the course of the discussions, the question of who we were reaching emerged as the major theme. The discussion document entitled, Why We Educate summed up the discussions this way: "...Trade union education has historically targeted the local union leadership and activists through a myriad of educational institutes and schools. Once back in the workplace it was anticipated that this group would share its knowledge and skills. After years of trade union institute training, the time has come to broaden the target group and take labor's message beyond our traditional arenas for education. "Union leaders and activists must take responsibility for undertaking the trade union education of the non-activist members in the local. This will require the education community of the labor movement to gear some of its resources toward coordination with other trade union services such as communications and research, but also to change some of the focus at its institutional schools to providing participants with the tools for education in the local union and workplace."Item Building Independent Political PowerColburn, Bruce (1996-06-01)[Excerpt] I am excited that the new leadership of the AFL-CIO is committing an additional $35 million to building labor's political operation during this election year. But I'm especially excited that they will be doing more than returning Clinton to the Presidency and Democratic control to the House and Senate—They are going to move labor's own agenda through ongoing political organizing, and not just in federal elections but in state and local ones.Item Ron Carey RespondsCarey, Ron (1996-06-01)[Excerpt] "A New Labor Movement in the Shell of the Old?" hits the nail on the head when it says that any hope of reviving the labor movement depends on change at the grassroots, not just in Washington, D.C. In the past five years, we in the Teamsters union have been facing the same challenge that now confronts the AFL-CIO: how to turn the labor bureaucracy into a labor movement again. The reforms we are making—while far from complete—confirm Brecher and Costello's argument that rankand- file involvement and new community coalitions are key to rebuilding labor's strength.Item AFL-CIO Central Labor Councils: Organizing for Social JusticeSneiderman, Marilyn (1996-06-01)[Excerpt] Movements start small and grow through struggle. They are born of rage and injustice, and built by winning victories. And each victory demonstrates that collective action is the first step to gaining the power to change our lives, our communities, our workplaces, and this country. At no time in modern labor history has the need and urgency to rebuild our movement been greater. We live and experience the consequences of the corporate assault on workers every day. This assault must be met and turned back in thousands of communities throughout the land — turned back at the workplace, at the bargaining table, at non-union work sites, at the voting booth and, increasingly, in the streets.Item A "New Labor Movement" in the Shell of the Old?Brecher, Jeremy; Costello, Tim (1996-06-01)[Excerpt] A lot has changed since the formation of the AFL-CIO 40 years ago. A regulated national economy has been transformed into a global economy — one in which American workers can be put into competition with others anywhere in the world. Corporations have decentralized their activities, downsized their in-house operations, and outsourced their production even while concentrating their power around the globe. Large urban industrial complexes like Detroit and Pittsburgh have been replaced by small, highly mobile production units, which can easily be relocated. White men have become the minority of the U.S. workforce and women and people of color the majority.Item LRR Focus(1996-06-01)[Excerpt] On the heels of the Democratic victory in the 1995 Kentucky Governor's race, the Kentucky Republican Party filed a complaint with the stale Registry of Election Finance. The complaint alleges collusion between the Democratic Party, the Patton campaign, various unions, and the A. Philip Randolph Institute (APRI), a Black voter education group based in Louisville, Kentucky.