Bemoaning the fact that there were only 5 strikes last year of 1000 workers or more (and 3 of those were public union strikes), labor editorialist Joe Burns is calling on unions to man-up, and invoke one of its most powerful weapons. Harkening back to the nostalgic 1970s, when there were over 200 major strikes per year, Burns calls on Big Labor to look beyond the current emphasis of corporate campaigns and political machinations,
We’ve done 20 years of corporate campaigns. Absent strikes that stop business as usual, they will never hit employers hard enough to fundamentally alter the relationship between workers and bosses. Unionism must be based on power and in particular the power to force a different distribution of wealth in society. Unionists need a new approach. Labor law reform is stalled, public employees are under attack, and, while unions must organize or die, an organizing strategy alone has proved incapable of reviving the movement. To attract workers, unions must have the economic tools to improve their lives. The alternative path to union growth is developing a grassroots, fighting labor movement—the one strategy proven capable of producing major gains for working people and attracting massive waves of new members.
Burns concludes,
But after decades of declining membership, we must begin a discussion of the fundamentals of union power. When the labor movement rises up again as a powerful force in the United States, it won’t be as a result of legislation or of cutting deals with employers. It will be because workers have taken back their most powerful weapons—solidarity and halting production.
If Big Labor continues to make headway in the political arena, our bet is we’ll see an uptick in all types of “union persuasion,” including strikes, corporate campaigns and shareholder actions among others.
