30 Years of Labor, Love, and Resistance

Thirty years on, we’re looking at a different labor movement from the one Labor Notes started goosing on February 20, 1979.

Back then, unions were 24 percent of the workforce, and contract fights were about increasing wages, not cutting them. That year saw more than a million workers on strike.

Reform movements had formed within the Steelworkers, Auto Workers, Teamsters, and Mine Workers. Those activists aimed at sluggish, overfed union officials.

As rank-and-file discontent bubbled up all over, Labor Notes’ idea was to give restless union members a clearinghouse of ideas for fighting the boss and changing the unions from below. “Let’s put the movement back in the labor movement” was the slogan.

CONCESSIONS START

But nine months later, employers began demanding concessions. In 1981, Ronald Reagan’s firing of 13,000 air traffic controllers signaled to the business class: make war, not love. Concessions spread nearly everywhere.

It quickly became clear that unions needed to ally with other movements and take the lead in the streets. In 1987 Jobs with Justice was born.

Local resistance to concessions was widespread, but labor statesmen embraced cooperation with management. Labor Notes produced three books and a dozen cross-union “team concept schools” advising how to resist management’s alphabet soup of collaboration schemes.

Teamwork morphed into lean production, and Labor Notes’ Mike Parker analyzed management-by stress, the new way of stretching workers.

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From our first conference in 1981, Labor Notes stressed international ties, discouraging Japan-bashing and covering unions’ fights against apartheid in South Africa, intervention in El Salvador, and NAFTA. Working with the Transnationals Information Exchange, we held trinational conferences of auto workers and telecom workers.

DISSIDENTS

We backed dissidents within unions, when few others would lend a hand. Still, most national reform movements evaporated, except in the Teamsters. Individual reformers won office, however. For them we published Democracy Is Power, arguing that union strength comes from member involvement.

That work continues, as pockets of resistance continue to spring up. Labor Notes serves as the link between new leaders and veteran reformers.

In 1995, John Sweeney’s slate swept into the AFL-CIO. Reform from above didn’t halt labor’s decline in numbers and clout. Further fiddling at the top, in the Change to Win split in 2005, didn't work either.

NEW BLOOD

What did breathe some life into labor was immigrants, through organizing wins and millions in the streets. A new type of organization, workers centers, sprang up. Their first national meeting was held at the 2003 Labor Notes conference.

Our 31st year resembles our first. As companies and government try to make workers pay for the crisis, we’re pointing to three decades of proof that concessions don’t save jobs.

Workers and their unions are in deep distress, despite the best efforts of tens of thousands of dedicated leaders and members. We take pride in the education and inspiration we’ve brought them, and the networks we’ve helped them build.

The victories won with Labor Notes’ help may have been temporary, thus far, but they were worthwhile nonetheless. Because every taste of power leaves workers wanting more.

We’re still hungry.