Meeting the Moment: Building a Left Pole of the Labor Movement

In the present moment, the labor movement could be on the cusp of extraordinary breakthroughs, with the real opportunity to organize masses of new workers, lead militant industrial actions, and build majoritarian political coalitions anchored by working class politics. Unfortunately, as currently constituted, the labor movement and most unions within it have been unable to rise to the challenge. DSA and socialist unionists need to work to cohere a left wing of the labor movement that is capable of acting independently and strategically to confront the risks we face and take advantage of the opportunities before us. Most importantly, we must build unions that have the resources, political commitment and skills to launch and win mass new organizing drives that can reach millions of new workers. This requires building rank and file organizations that can construct the coalitions necessary to reform our unions. It also requires systematically recruiting a layer of organic leaders already organizing within existing unions, especially women and people of color, into participation in an organized democratic socialist bloc. It requires politicizing our unions, and mobilizing workers both to build working class political power and to take leadership in the fight against the growing fascist threat.

The Moment

An analysis of concrete conditions in the spring of 2023 yields a contradictory picture for the working class and the trade union movement in the United States. Opinion polls show popular support for unions at an all-time high, particularly among teenagers and people in their twenties. Labor unions, while at just 6% density in the private sector, hold billions of dollars in net assets. Popular sentiment has supported some of the highest-profile new organizing at Starbucks and Amazon and yet US unions have declined to just 10.1% union density overall. It is a paradoxical proletarian moment as support runs high and the resources exist to organize, but trade unions have not stepped up to embrace the massive challenge of organizing millions of workers into labor’s ranks. Many unions remain defensive, complacent, and unable to build unity within their own membership across generational, gendered, racial, political and cultural divides.

A variety of factors have incapacitated most unions’ ability to meet the moment: shrinking union membership feeds union leadership’s defensive posture; time is wasted on arguing with each other over turf instead of actually organizing nonunion shops; our current movement often lacks experience with new organizing and we often do not have the training, mentorship, resources, and infrastructure needed to win first contract campaigns. Huge corporations have no interest in good faith bargaining because we don’t have the leverage -- including meaningful labor law -- to bring them to the table, and many public sector workers lack the right to collectively bargain at all. Historically, new organizing has been driven in part by the ideological commitments of left and socialist unionists, but the left remains too disorganized and weak within the labor movement at present to effect a major shift in strategy. 

Decades of neoliberalism have led to declines in both union and nonunion wages and benefits through layoffs, deindustrialization, and downward declassifications. The inability of the labor movement to effectively challenge these trends has too often allowed the right-wing to whip up opposition to unions and labor-backed political candidates among working people.

Objective conditions have forced many workers – young, Black and Brown, immigrant – to seek out new forms of organization outside the traditional union paradigm. For instance, the proliferation of workers centers, immigrant rights groups, and independent unions such as Trader Joe’s United and Amazon Labor Union have stepped in where traditional unions have failed to organize. In some cases these alternative efforts (like the Fight for $15 and Union of Southern Service Workers) have been supported by traditional trade unions, and in other cases initiated by other organizations or by workers acting independently in the absence of support from the institutional labor movement. DSA, in partnership with the United Electrical Workers, has played a key role in facilitating some of this new organizing through its role in the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, stepping in to encourage workers to organize and support them in the early stages of organizing drives.

Within existing trade unions, positive signs for the future exist on a number of fronts. The rank-and-file caucus Teamsters for a Democratic Union has made a strategic alliance with center forces in the Teamsters to bring to power new leadership that is organizing a militant battle with UPS. The UAW also has seen a left-center alliance take power - fed by the Uniting All Workers for Democracy reform effort, the backlash against tiering and concessions in the auto industry, and the militancy of academic workers in California and elsewhere - which means that this union will be able to engage with the Big Three this fall with new-found militancy. The reinvigoration of the UAW and Teamsters membership may mean a new capacity to take on the key tasks of organizing the millions of auto parts and assembly workers largely concentrated in the right-to-work south and the millions of workers at Amazon. 

In the public sector, majority-women educator and school staff unions, concentrated in the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers, are at the front lines of key developments in labor politics. In red states, these workers are at the front lines of the fight against right-wing anti-trans and anti-Black attempts to control public school curriculum and culture, and the unprecedented 2018 Red for Ed strike wave demonstrated the latent power of education workers even where their union rights are sharply constrained. In the context of major urban centers, the importance of the sequence of events starting with the left rank-and-file caucus CORE, its takeover of the Chicago Teachers’ Union, and the union's subsequent 2012 strike, to this new moment of labor militancy cannot be overstated. Their ability to cohere a city-wide multiracial working class movement fighting against privatization has forever pierced the “there is no alternative” logic of neoliberal corporate education reform. Just recently, they have been able to translate their shrewd supermajority organization-building and coalition building in Chicago into a stunning electoral success, with Brandon Johnson winning a tightly contested race for mayor over billionaire school privatizer and “tough-on-crime” candidate Paul Vallas. Similarly, rank-and-file reform election victories in the United Teachers of Los Angeles and several Massachusetts educator unions have led to significant shop floor wins and electoral successes on issues of the public good and anti-racism, diverting funds from the police budget to invest in programs for Black and Brown students in L.A., and raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for more equitable school funding models in Massachusetts.

Many of the ingredients are in place for a reinvigoration of the labor movement at a national scale - successful union reform efforts, increased strike activity, an upsurge in successful union elections, the formation of independent unions, the proliferation of new organizing models, and unions successfully building and leading key political fights against the right and the neoliberal center. So far, though, no major union has been able to initiate or coordinate new organizing or militant action at a truly mass scale, and the left within the labor movement does not yet have the strength or organization to realize this opportunity.     

Key Tasks of Socialists in Labor 

At the current juncture, the key task of socialists in the labor movement is to build a labor movement or pole of the labor movement capable of coordination around a left strategy. This strategy must include militant shop-floor action that can take on major employers; overcoming racism and discrimination that divide our unions internally and oppress workers of color; organizing the unorganized, particularly in the South, the Sunbelt, and other right-to-work states; building coalitions that can beat back neoliberal politics; and building a worker-led wing of a united front against fascism. These tasks are all furthered by building the left, rank-and-file, and  socialist forces in our unions that can enter strategic political alliances with the many progressive forces in the labor movement and change the direction of our unions. If we are serious about building the working-class power necessary to transform our society, we must continue to build a rank-and-file socialist pole and overcome the fragmentation in the progressive ecosystem of working class organizations -- unions, workers centers, other alternative labor formations, grassroots community groups, etc. -- to strategize and act together to further the interests of workers as a social movement. 

While DSA remains disproportionately white and male, the labor movement is much more representative of the diverse US working class, especially Black workers. We must invest in the leadership of grassroots union leaders who could strengthen their locals, improve their collective bargaining agreements, and grow their membership if they had more organizing training and a community of practice to turn to for advice - a community eager to throw down during key campaign moments. We are up against staggering odds and nasty employers -- we do not always need a wholesale replacement of existing union leadership, especially when many union leaders already have working-class or socialist politics, but are simply disconnected from any organized socialist movement. Socialists can nurture sustainable leadership that can be passed on within locals, making our unions stronger from within. Showing up for existing militant shop stewards, executive board members, local presidents and business managers is not only the right thing to do to beat back the capitalist class, but can also be the basis to recruit working-class labor leaders, especially women and people of color, into DSA. If we support campaigns with real potential to win by those most exploited by capitalism, we all get one step closer to collective liberation. 

Labor does not live by bread alone. The rise of the right in this moment requires an anti-fascist, anti-racist united front in electoral politics, and the most left and progressive layers of the labor movement will be motivated to be fighting organizations in battleground states in electoral politics. In primaires, socialists must push our unions to embrace and build on DSA’s electoral successes by supporting working-class and democratic socialist candidates at all levels of government. We can push our unions to follow the lead of the Chicago Teachers in building working-class-led political coalitions that can defend public workers, hold the line on the privatization of more and more of our public goods, and transform politics in cities and states across the country. When it comes to the general election, socialists on the labor-left will need clarity both about the opportunities presented by the Biden administration’s pro worker initiatives–an activist NLRB, NLRB funding, public support for Amazon workers unionizing, support for the PRO Act and pro-labor provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act–and also the administration’s many failures on those fronts, the imposition of the rail worker contract without sick leave, and President Biden’s life-long alignment with the corporate wing of the Democratic Party. Yet the choice for labor in 2024 will be clear: Succumb to a racist, fascistic Republican onslaught or mobilize in support of left challengers in Democratic primaries and ultimately the Democratic nominee in the Presidential election. Regardless of how DSA itself orients to the 2024 general elections, socialists can demonstrate true solidarity in the labor movement and particularly among people of color by being the most stalwart fighters against right-wing fascism. Within mass organizations like unions, socialists should be proud to deploy as part of union ballot brigades in support of cutting edge electoral work in battleground states. 

Finally, socialists must fight within our unions to take risks and invest resources in organizing new workers and winning first contracts. Without an organized, ideological, democratic socialist pole in the labor movement agitating for investment in strategic new organizing campaigns, complacency will continue to win out within the institutional labor movement, and it will likely be impossible to realize a wave of new worker organizing, especially in right-to-work states. With rank-and-file socialist leadership on the shop floor, new organizing drives offer an opportunity not just to grow the labor movement, but to reestablish the leading role of socialist worker organizers within it. The present moment is full of dangers but also offers a historic opportunity for labor – socialists must make sure we seize it.

Our recommendations going forward can be summarized briefly as:

For DSA members who are looking for work or working non-union jobs:

• Participating in actions in support of worker organizing through DSA chapters;

• Looking for or taking jobs in strategic union or non-union working places with an orientation towards organizing fellow workers;

• Organizing their workplaces.

For DSA members who are already active in the labor movement:

• Taking part in the rank-and-file organizing and coalition-building necessary to reform and transform our unions;

• Moving our unions to build the left and fight the right-wing threat by endorsing working class candidates and registering, mobilizing and defending voters in key primaries and in battleground states;

• Moving our unions to organize the unorganized in key industries like manufacturing, logistics, education, and healthcare;

• Moving public sector unions to protect public goods, through bargaining for the common good and fighting against the right-wing attacks on public education;  

• Supporting existing rank and file leaders in order to build a more militant union culture, win new union victories, and recruit more working-class women and people of color leaders into DSA.

For DSA chapters:

• Supporting workers who are engaged in contract campaigns, militant actions or new organizing campaigns;

• Supporting DSA members in seeking employment in strategic union and non-union jobs locally;

• Supporting initiatives to expand rights and protections for workers to make it easier to organize.

• Using DSA's political and legislative campaigns to build alliances with workers and unions wherever possible.

For National DSA:

• Continuing to build strong relationships with organizations like EWOC that allow socialists to organize where traditional trade unions have been missing in action;

• Building our national capacity for salting and placing networked comrades in key industries to support organizing the unorganized and union reform;

• Supporting DSA locals and members in determining how to strategically engage with existing unions, new worker organizing drives, and reform efforts;

• Maintaining a focus on the Southern states where union density is low and much of strategic manufacturing like the auto industry has located and where Black workers in particular have a history of struggle and organization;

• Fighting for desperately needed reform of the broken system of US labor law;

• Supporting workers and workers’ organizations worldwide, and holding up the struggle in places around the world where the working class is on the move.