Un-accomplishments in a Union Town--Part 2

In Part 1 LaborLeft noted the slow decline in the standard of living of unionized workers in the Madison, Wisconsin, area and our ineffective efforts to stop the slide. In Part 2 we examine the abysmal state of organizing. In Part 3 we will look at labor’s political work in this Union Town.

Where’s the Organizing?

Ten years ago, the South Central Federation of Labor’s Organizing Committee put together a list of over 200 large employers in the Madison, Wisconsin, area that were not unionized. At the time, there was no organizing going on at any them.

That was 10 years ago. And, there still has been no organizing at any of those 200 shops.

Although there have been a handful of sporadic organizing campaigns in Madison, the last significant organizing win was my own local 15 years ago!

But organizing is the Life Blood of the Labor Movement. Job One. We hear it all the time. That’s why we have organizing departments and organizing line items in our budgets, right?

So, how is it, then, that there’s no organizing going on in this Union Town?

Two Current Drives

We need to acknowledge two current organizing drives going on in the Madison area. UNITE-HERE is running a campaign to organize laundry workers at Superior Linen and the SEIU is running a campaign to organize janitors at CleanPower.

But these are two cases in point. The staff and members working on these campaigns are as good as they come. They’re dedicated and talented and they work tirelessly. The workers are mercilessly exploited and threatened by their employers. Most speak Spanish as their first language.

In both instances, there is little visible rank-and-file participation in the drives. They appear to be run essentially from the outside. The strategy, in both cases, seems to be to pressure secondary users of the service (American Family Insurance Company in the case of CleanPower and St. Mary’s Hospital in the Superior Linen case) to, in turn, put pressure on the employers to voluntarily recognize the union.

There are obviously limits to what a handful of dedicated and talented staff and courageous workers can do, even if they work day and night.

What Would We Do?

If you ask around union officialdom, the reason there’s no organizing going on in town is because we have no hot leads. But a former Fed staffer hit the nail on the head: “What would we do with a hot lead if we got one?”

What we know happens now is that when someone calls the Fed office and wants to talk about forming a union, they are turned over to a staffer from the “appropriate” international…after which they disappear.

I know many of the staffers who get these leads and they’re all dedicated union people. But, they are busy bargaining half a dozen contracts, doing arbitrations and running trainings. They just don’t have the time or, frankly, the orientation to follow up. When they get an organizing lead, they may make a call or two, maybe set up a meeting, but it’s clear that this approach won’t result in any new organizing drives in Madison anytime soon.

So, if there’s no one to handle hot leads when they come up, there’s no reason to go out and generate leads in the first place.

Business Union Organizing Model

The Business Union Organizing Model assumes that organizing drives must be run by paid professional union staffers. Drives need big budgets, not only for flown-in and put-up specialized staff but for office space, computers, professional survey services, phone banks, professionally-designed mailings and a well-stocked office refrigerator. From the accounting perspective of the internationals, it would be fiscally irresponsible to make that kind of investment for a few hundred workers in Madison, Wisconsin.

And, what’s to think we’d win? Under the Business Model, you’re selling the customer a service. But, as we’ve seen in Part 1, current union settlements are nothing to brag about. Furthermore, if the union expects to get a quick first contract (so that they can begin collecting dues), members’ expectations must be lowered to the point that they’ll vote for a bad deal. Even with a fully-staff and fully-funded drive, that’s a hard sell.

Where’s the Upsurge?

This in stark contrast to the days of yore, when labor was a true mass movement. When, as we’ll see in an up-coming article entitled How to Win Strikes, workers organized themselves and leaders had to pull double shifts just to sign up new members.

In The Next Upsurge, available from Rainbow Books in Madison , Dan Clawson presents some sobering numbers. Even if the AFL-CIO/CtW could organize twice as many members as they do now (which they can’t), it would take 30 years to return to the levels of union membership 30 years ago. Statistically, Business-Unionism-as-usual isn’t going to turn things around.

What Clawson and others point out is that unions don’t grow in slow increments but in sudden bursts. Throughout history we have seen resurgent unionism only when labor becomes a mass movement for social justice and goes on the offensive by winning big strikes with militant tactics.

We have to go back to the 1930’s to witness the beginnings of the last upsurge in this country. And, maybe that’s not a bad place to start figuring out what we need to do today.


In Part 3 we will look at labor’s political work, here in our Union Town. And, watch for How to Win Strikes, coming next month.

In the meantime, this is a forum. So, weigh in on the discussion by clicking on “comments.” To send this to a fellow union activist, click on the envelope icon below.

In solidarity,

Ron Blascoe
Steward AFT 4848