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How to Organize the 50 Million Workers Who Say They Want to Join a Union |
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by Harry Kelber
(No verified email address) |
04 Mar 2004
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Let's establish AFL-CIO Recruiting Centers in every city and community where unions have a presence. They should be staffed by union members who know how to answer questions from unorganized workers. The Centers should have plenty of union literature and samples of union constitutions and contracts. The walls should be lined with posters and photographs of labor's achievements. And the Centers should be open to the public.
Most important, each Center should build a database of workers who are interested in joining, containing information about their occupation, workplace, where they can be reached and other relevant data. AFL-CIO Recruiting Centers should also be set up on the Internet, performing many of the same functions as those on the ground. |
Independent studies have shown that there are as many as 50 million unorganized workers who say they want to join a union. That number is substantially more than three times the 13 million who are members of the AFL-CIO. That's the richest, highly favorable field for organizing since the 1930s, and we should take advantage of it.
It is probably true that millions of workers are scared to join for fear of losing their jobs. The AFL-CIO has frightened many of them by constantly repeating a litany of ways that employers can use to intimidate and fire them for even talking about a union. They are constantly being told by both employers and labor leaders that joining a union is a risk, not a right.
But there must be millions of workers who would like to join a union but have never been asked. They've figured out that they can get better wages and benefits with a union than without one, but they don't know where to go to join, or what happens next when they do join.
It's up to union organizers and volunteers to reach out to these potential recruits and help them become union members. Even those who are scared can be convinced to join if we can get to talk to them. But where and how? Here is what we propose:
Let's establish AFL-CIO Recruiting Centers in every city and community where unions have a presence. They should be staffed by union members who know how to answer questions from unorganized workers. The Centers should have plenty of union literature and samples of union constitutions and contracts. The walls should be lined with posters and photographs of labor's achievements. And the Centers should be open to the public.
Most important, each Center should build a database of workers who are interested in joining, containing information about their occupation, workplace, where they can be reached and other relevant data. AFL-CIO Recruiting Centers should also be set up on the Internet, performing many of the same functions as those on the ground.
Each Center should periodically conduct Open House meetings, and assign a corps of union volunteers for house calls to the homes and workplaces of unorganized workers. It should create a Speakers Bureau of articulate members to convey the union message to organizations in the community and to take on opponents of unions in debate.
The AFL-CIO should sponsor national weekly one-hour television and radio programs, whose quality will be equal to popular programs in terms of entertainment and audience interest. We have a wealth of talented actors, writers, musicians and other entertainers who are union members and who would be eager to help spread the union message.
The AFL-CIO should transmit weekly reports about labor developments to each Center, with an Alert system to deal with emergencies.
We should start planning for a Million Americans March on Washington that would include both union, non-union and immigrant workers and people from all walks of life who believe that every American should have the freedom to form and join a union.
These suggestions are practical ones that could be put in place in a reasonable period of time if given the approval of the AFL-CIO Executive Council. They are concrete actions for mobilizing union members and would add momentum to labor's struggle for basic worker rights. The AFL CIO and its affiliates should set up a special fund to be used exclusively to finance these organizing activities.
Let's learn from the lessons of our labor history. In the late 1930s, with America still in a deep depression, the CIO (Committee for Industrial Organization) brought millions of workers into the union movement under its banner. In little more than two years, it organized and won contracts for workers in General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, U.S. Steel, Bethlehem Steel, Firestone Rubber, Caterpillar, General Electric, Westinghouse, RCA and major companies in textile, telephone and retail service industries.
Fifty million American workers say they want to join a union. Let's really open the door to them.
Our weekly "LaborTalk" and "Labor and the War" columns can be viewed on our Web site www.laboreducator.org. Union members who wish information about the AFL-CIO Reform Movement should visit www.rankandfileaflcio.org. |
See also:
http://www.laboreducator.org/
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