Toto muzzled open the office door. There, behind the huge desk, sat a little man, shouting into a speaker phone. His amplified voice boomed into the outer office.
“Close the door. And go away. Pay no attention to the man behind the desk. I am the Great Wizard. And I command you.”
“Oh, shit,” said Dorothy. “Look. It’s the Wizard. But he isn’t a wizard at all. He’s just a little guy yelling into the phone.”
“Dang,” said the Scarecrow. “If the Wizard doesn’t have magical powers, we came all this way for nothing. Now we’ll never pass the Employee Free Choice Act, so we’ll never be able to organize.”
“Yeah,” added the Tin Man. “I was going to ask the Wizard to pass a law so I could organize Academic Staff. Without a new law, we’re screwed.”
“What about me?” whimpered the Cowardly Lion. “I was counting on the Great Wizard to get the NLRB to rule in our favor, so we can save the union at Woodman’s. If he’s a fake, we’ve got no chance at all.”
“And I came all this way to ask the Wizard to institute a government that would be responsive to the needs of working people,” sighed Dorothy. “It looks like we were all just wasting our time.”
“Oooooh. Oh, no,” said the Wizard, coming out from behind the big desk. “No, no. You didn’t waste your time. Not at all.”
“Sure, I’m just a faker. I got no magical powers. But look at you!”
“You, there, Scarecrow. You don’t need no new laws to organize unions. Why, the great industrial unions in this country were organized totally outside of the laws. They struck for recognition and they used mass picket lines and sit-down strikes to force the boss to the table. You can start organizing as soon as you realize that.”
“And, you, Tin Man. You won’t organize Academic Staff with a law. You’ll organize them by going out and talking up the union. If you have something worthwhile, they’ll join up in droves. If not, forcing them to pay dues with a law sure won’t solve your problems.”
“And, hey, Lion. Stop your sniveling, for Christ sake. You came all this way, kicking flying monkey butt and melting witches, but you still ain’t figured it out.”
“You want to save the union out at Woodman’s? Then you gotta go out and talk about the union with the workers. Get ‘em to working together to fight those speed-ups and that 2-tier health care system. Show ‘em how working together—organizing a union—can make their lives better”
“And, Dorothy. Dear Dorothy. What can I say? You and your brothers here speak for the material interests of the vast majority of the people. Working people, in this country and around the world.”
“You don’t need no Wizard with magical powers to get that working class government you want. You’ve had the power all along. You just have to realize it.”
“But, how?”
“Look down, Dorothy. See those red shoes you’re wearing. They’ll take you to that working class government you want.”
There was a long silence as Dorothy, the Lion, Scarecrow, Tin Man and even Toto pondered the Wizard’s words.
“Did I mention the shoes are red?”
“Yeah, yeah, Wiz. We got that part.”
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8 comments:
Ok, the last bit about the shoes actually got me to, as the kids say, LOL. Awesome.
Brilliant. Now you just need to turn it into a YouTube video so you can reach the, um, masses.
Tami
Thorold, Ont.
Right on target. The labor movement needs to stop looking for outside saviors. Obama won't save'em, the Democrats won't save'em, no law or agency or politican. They are all tools that can only be effectively used and retained by a mobilized and powerful movement. A glorified insurance company model of unionism just doesn't cut it.
So what about Glinda the good witch of the north? I suppose the wicked witch of the west represents the evil bosses, and the flying monkeys are scabs and goons.
Your point is well stated. Why haven't we seen more independent out of the mainstream organizing going on.Perhaps because the anti working class political climate as exemplified by mass layoffs, wages cuts and etc has created a fearful atmosphere in the toiling masses. Combine that with a woeful lack of contemporary class struggle experience, and you have a formula for a submissive passivity that lingers in the air like the seductive aromas that wafted through the poppy fields that put Dorthy and her working class friends to sleep. The situation will have to grow more desperate before we will see the wind direction shift and when it does all hell could break loose.In the mean time, with the wave of Glinda's magic wand Dorthy and her class struggle friends can turn up the agitation level. We will organize those flying monkeys yet. For a General Strike in all of Munchkin Land!!
“Yeah,” added the Tin Man. “I was going to ask the Wizard to pass a law so I could organize Academic Staff. Without a new law, we’re screwed.”
“And, you, Tin Man. You won’t organize Academic Staff with a law. You’ll organize them by going out and talking up the union. If you have something worthwhile, they’ll join up in droves. If not, forcing them to pay dues with a law sure won’t solve your problems.”
I must agree, as well as disagree. Where I agree is that the improperly categorized workers -- screwed by the UW administration for all these years in their mis-categorization -- need to be organized properly. There needs to be a full-scale campaign to get out and have the conversations with these workers to "unionize" them (and by that, I don't mean just win certification, but instead to develop some union identity and consciousness). That's the only way to build a strong union anyway, and it would make this whole thing all the more successful.
But then you start having to deal with competing pressures on resources, which is probably a whole other conversation for a whole other day...
Now, where I disagree is with the implied assumption that what is going on is somehow sinister -- or that AFT-Wisconsin (or WPEC) is the root of this. No, the UW administration's systematic mis-categorization of workers over a decade and a half led to some folks who should have been in the professional employee unit being called "academic staff." AFT-Wisconsin/WPEC are working to fix the mistake, and with a good reason:
When the academic staff who are properly categorized get their petition to WERC for a representation election in, the labor board is going to need to determine who's in the unit and who's not. That's right, what amounts to a unit clarification would happen when there's a live organizing campaign on the ground. So from one point of view, unit clarification is impending -- the WERC will review the unit and sort people then anyway.
Now we're good unionists, and we want workers represented by a union, so we'd want that academic staff organizing drive to be successful when they petition and take the vote, right? Well what better gift to the UW administration could be given than providing them with the opportunity to cool the heels of that drive by fighting the unit structure and composition in a lengthy battle that would probably end up in the courts. So it can either happen now -- and fix the mistake -- or then -- and kill the momentum on a campaign.
I personally prefer a) that mistakes get corrected when it comes to management breaking the labor law and b) that union certification drives are successful.
The workers in question didn't create this, and they shouldn't be punished multiple time. Can AFT-Wisconsin and WPEC do a better job of going out to organize the academic staff who are currently mis-categorized and would likely be affected by a unit clarification? Probably. But then again, the UW administration issued rules essentially prohibiting it at the workplace and they tried tossing organizers who did go out doing it.
Remember, management is management, and they're going to look out for management, even when it sounds like they're protecting workers (a littler paternalistically at that); the union is for the workers, and workers gotta be for the union.
“Dang,” said the Scarecrow. “If the Wizard doesn’t have magical powers, we came all this way for nothing. Now we’ll never pass the Employee Free Choice Act, so we’ll never be able to organize.”
“You, there, Scarecrow. You don’t need no new laws to organize unions. Why, the great industrial unions in this country were organized totally outside of the laws. They struck for recognition and they used mass picket lines and sit-down strikes to force the boss to the table. You can start organizing as soon as you realize that.”
There are two responses to this that I think are necessary in any kind of conversation on this post. First, one of historical accuracy and context; second, one of Historical Context (capitalization delineating).
You are correct in that the dynamism of the 1930s labor movement, before and even after passage (and judicial ratification) of the Wagner Act was really the spark that built the modern American labor movement, pregnant with possibility and promise, and potentially even a harbinger of something greater. They did it through direct action, sometimes spontaneously, but often with meticulous planning, organizing, and execution -- with lots of real courage thrown in too. But don't forget that the legitimation of unionism was at least a quarter century in the making at that point, and that the WWI labor policies and even the NIRA made unions a viable reality at that point, greater even than what the Knights of Labor and IWW had been in the late 19th century.
The growth of unionism took off in the 1930s and 1940s because of a number of endogenous and exogenous factors. "Write them all here!" you say? More than a few thousand pages full of ink have been spilled in enough graduate students' dissertations and assistant professors tenure-snagging monograms with this story. Or stories. But it's fallacious to say that it was simply direct action on its own that caused -- and was consequence -- of the growth of unionism and the formal labor movement in the U.S. Union growth took off after Wagner, not before. The pre-Wagner days gave labor its elan and forward-punching momentum, but those days did not turn into the stuff of modern (as opposed to contemporary) American unionism.
But today, the times are very different in many ways. While the maturation of the industrial revolution and the rise of the modern corporation portended the labor vs. capital fights that gave unions the narrative of the fight -- and the consciousness of the workers to engage in the fight -- today's developments in late capitalism mean that a 1:1 correlation between the strategies and tactics of the 1930s and those to be used in the 2010s is simply not possible. Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't lessons to be learned.
[Continued...]
[...Continued]
My quibble is more that the simplistic, glib moralizing immediately closes the ears and minds of the potential allies within unions, community groups, and political formations that are the necessary, and perhaps marginally sufficient, actors for a 21st century unionism that rekindles the spirit of a labor movement. Making the case as being so easy, so directly transferbale from the 1930s to today might make good copy, but in doing so, it opens up the argument to attacks that can pick it apart -- or worse, never get heard at all.
We need a more vibrant, dynamic, activist, progressive -- militant -- unionism for the 21st century. One that gets that we need to organize workers, not politicians -- but that politicians can be an important part of making it possible to organize workers. But to make that happen, like it or not, because of the complexity and size/scope of American capitalism and not only the resources they have to fight unionism, but also the ferocity with which they do and will do it, we need to have some institutional actors of heft on our side. So it's time to move them from point A to point to be with this notion of union revitalization, or as a great organizer once said deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it were.
*****
I should also say that I do not believe that EFCA is the magical cure that most think that it is. It can be a tool, but it's not the end-all -- it only makes it more possible to actually engage in organizing with any expectation of success; but it's not enough to actually build unions. That will require a commitment to real organizing and real unionism.
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