6 Ways to Juice Up the Labor Movement

[Omaha Steve]

http://broadcastunionnews.blogspot.com/2012/12/6-ways-to-juice-up-labor-movement.html

Wednesday, December 26, 2012
6 Ways to Juice Up the Labor Movement
By Sarah Jaffe
AlterNet

Some of the smartest organizers and thinkers we know give us their suggestions on how to build a reinvigorated, vibrant labor movement.


The passage of a so-called “right-to-work” law in Michigan recently left the labor movement feeling gut-punched.

The law, which defunds unions by allowing workers in shops represented by a union to opt out of paying for the cost of representing them, was a blow at the once-mighty unions that made manufacturing work, particularly Michigan's famed auto manufacturing, a middle-class career. It came in the heart of union country, and while after Ohio and Wisconsin (not to mention RTW's passage in Indiana last year as well) it was hardly a surprise that the wealthy businessmen who fund the Republican party wanted to destroy the labor movement once and for all, the swift passage of the bill (in just days) despite the protests of thousands outside still felt demoralizing.

To make matters worse, it came on the heels of some of the most exciting labor organizing in years; the strikes of hundreds of workers across the country at Walmart stores and warehouses, the strikes of fast-food workers in New York and similar organizing in Chicago. It came not long after Chicago's teachers union struck and pushed back against a wave of corporate-backed education reform policies.

While Michigan's unions regroup and begin the twin processes of trying to survive and retain dues-paying members in the face of RTW and trying to find a way to overturn the law, it's clear that the national labor movement needs to do more than just fight defensive battle after defensive battle. To kick-start a conversation, AlterNet spoke with several of the smartest organizers and labor thinkers we know, and asked them for their suggestions on how labor can go on the offensive in the next year.


FULL story at link.

[Manoverde84]

2. more unions, more strikes....

We need a massive new labor movement

[Sherman A1]

3. indeed

one hopes that we will see a resurgence of the labor movement as the pendulum swings back from the New Gilded Age in which we live.