strategy and tactics

By Jane McAlevey - The Nation, May 21, 2024

Mercedes put on an “A-level boss fight.” Which was only to be expected. So how can the union win next time?

Late last Friday afternoon, Shawn Fain, president of the UAW, addressed workers at the Mercedes SUV plant in Vance, Alabama, after the union failed in a representation election (2,054 votes in favor, 2,642 against) many had expected them to win. He told them, “Justice isn’t about one vote or one campaign. It’s about getting a voice, getting your fair share.”

When Fain was sworn in as president on March 26, 2023—after winning the first direct election for the UAW presidency by just 477 votes—the challenges were monumental. He had national negotiations for the Big Three automakers coming up in less than six months and an organization plagued by decades of corruption. The union was burdened with staff used to taking the easy way out, allowing members’ contracts to worsen as its leadership indulged in fancy cigars, fine hotels, and gourmet food.

In the 14 months since his election, Fain has made remarkable headway. He launched a bold strategy in the Big Three negotiations—the stand-up strike—which resulted in significant gains. Next came the North Carolina Daimler truck negotiations for plants in North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee, and the decisive unionization win at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga. His intrepid leadership reaches far beyond the union and has uplifted the entire progressive movement.

Perhaps for that reason, the VW victory raised expectations that the UAW could win in Alabama. But Alabama isn’t Tennessee. Alabama’s top business, political, and community leadership are so hostile to unions that they implemented every nefarious tactic in the 1993 book by the notorious union buster Martin J. Levitt, Confessions of a Union Buster. In it, Levitt outlined a campaign just like the one headed by Alabama Governor Kay Ivey. “The enemy was the collective spirit,” Levitt writes. “I got a hold of that spirit and while it was a seedling; I poisoned it, choked it, bludgeoned it if I had to, anything to be sure it would never blossom into a united workforce.” He forthrightly admitted that anti-union consultants are “terrorists…. as the consultants go about the business of destroying unions, they invade people’s lives, demolish their friendships, crush their will, and shatter families.”

By Eric Blanc - Labor Polictics, May 20, 2024

There’s no sugarcoating it: Mercedes workers’ loss last week was a punch in the gut. Hopefully we can soon get some sober assessments from worker leaders and staff organizers about what — if anything — they’d try to do differently next time around.

But it’s also necessary to take a step back and acknowledge that any ambitious strategy for unionizing millions will entail lots of losses along the way. There’s an obvious way this is true: labor movements that don’t try to organize the unorganized — or that don’t go on risky strikes — never experience any big losses, they just steadily decline into irrelevance. If you unionize and strike more, your total number of losses will also rise, all other things being equal.

The point I want to make in this article, however, is more specific and less intuitive: ambitious labor movements that try to win widely actually lose a higher percentage of battles than do most unions today. Winning big and winning at scale require taking many more risks and relying less on staff. And this generally entails a higher loss rate. 

As I’ll show below, one of the reasons why labor’s win rate in union elections has been so exceptionally high over the past two decades is that exceptionally few unions are seriously pursuing new organizing. And those that do are often only taking on and sticking with drives that they’re very confident will win. Any chance labor has at making a big breakthrough — any chance at decisively reversing decades of decline — requires being okay with more losses along the way.

By Luis Feliz Leon and Jane Slaughter - Labor Notes, May 17, 2024

A no-holds-barred campaign by Mercedes management convinced a majority of workers at its Alabama factory complex to vote against forming a union.

In addition to anti-union videos and mailings, captive-audience meetings, firings, and an onslaught of pressure from state politicians and even a local pastor, the winning move was to fire the company’s U.S. CEO and replace him with a vice president who promised to care about the “team members.”

A team leader named Ray Trammell, who voted no, said his area was 100 percent union before the former CEO was removed. “[New CEO] Federico [Kochlowski] has been a positive influence,” he said. “A lot of people want to give him a chance. It was all production-driven before him; he’s more about the team members. He’s willing to change.

“We have a year. We have that year to see what he does. If he doesn’t make positive changes we can bring the union in.” (After losing an election a union has to wait a year before filing a new petition for the same group of workers.)

The vote, held May 13-17, was 2,045 in favor of forming a union to 2,642 against. The majority of the workforce is Black. There were 51 challenged ballots, and five voided; 5,075 workers, not including contract workers, were eligible to vote.

“These courageous workers took on this fight because they wanted justice,” said United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain. He said the federal government and the German government are investigating the intimidation that Mercedes inflicted on workers, following the “same playbook” of union-busting as other U.S. employers.

“Ultimately these workers are going to win,” he said. “We have no regrets in this fight.”

Pro-union fit and finish worker Rick Webster had brought his fourth-grade son Aaron to the vote count. “I wanted him to witness history,” he said shortly beforehand. “It’s going to be life-changing. We can’t wait. We will be able to negotiate instead of being dictated to.”

At Mercedes, previous union efforts had never gotten this far. So this was the first time workers had experienced a full-on anti-union campaign—and it worked on some of them. A worker named Keda, for example, said she wanted to “give Federico a chance.” She pointed to management’s elimination of two-tier wages as an indication of good faith.

Others voted no more out of fear than out of hope. “If it’s not broke, don’t rock the boat,” said a worker named Terry. Team leader Arthur Bates said he didn’t want to see layoffs. “Mercedes has shareholders and they have to keep the shareholders happy,” he explained. “If they lose some money somewhere, the company will find a way to make that money back.”

The workers who have been fighting so hard to organize were surprised and disappointed at the loss—but they said their resolve wasn’t shaken. “We’ll try to figure out what we did wrong, where we missed the mark,” said battery worker Robert Lett. “We’ll try to figure out how to shore up for the next time. Because there will be another time. We’re not just going to shrug and walk away.

“We know this company; we know their M.O. We know the company values their profits more than they value their employees. As soon as they feel like it’s advantageous to them, they’re not going to take workers’ personal lives into account.”

“It’s disappointing that some of our supporters slipped to vote no,” said Kirk Garner, a quality worker in plant two. “It’s disappointing that the company put on an anti-union campaign when it was part of their company policy not to.”

But, he said, “we’ve been trying this for 25 years. We’ll try again next year and every year till we get it. We’ll wait three or four months and start over.”

By Jeremy Brecher - Labor Network for Sustainability, May 16, 2024

The Green New Deal from Below pursues strategic objectives that implement Green New Deal programs, expand the Green New Deal’s support, and shift the balance between pro- and anti-Green New Deal forces. Not every action is likely to accomplish all of these objectives, but most actions aim to accomplish more than one of them at the same time.

The first set of objectives aim to make concrete changes that accomplish the goals of the Green New Deal. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is an objective of many actions, ranging from insulating urban housing to shutting down mines and power plants. Reducing injustice and inequality is similarly a goal of actions ranging from ensuring access to climate jobs for those who have been excluded from them to putting low-emission transit in vehicle-polluted neighborhoods. Another objective is improving the position of workers through such means as incorporating labor rights in climate legislation, establishing training and job ladders for climate jobs, and actively supporting the right of workers to organize and exercise their power. Green New Deal projects usually aim to accomplish these purposes synergistically, for example by designing climate-protection policies that also reduce injustice and empower workers on the job.

Green New Deal projects generally embody another set of objectives: educating and inspiring people. This happens through direct educational efforts like workshops, community forums, webinars, educational materials, and making known what has been accomplished elsewhere. Many programs involve basic education on climate, justice, and labor issues.

Campaigns like those for the Washington and Illinois clean energy and jobs acts involved long and extensive educational campaigns. But much of the inspiration and education provided by the Green New Deals takes the form of expanding the limits of what is believed to be possible by showing the power of people when they organize — and by constructing exemplary projects that inspire people to believe that more is possible. These exemplary actions produce powerful evidence for the value and feasibility of the Green New Deal.

Green New Deal from Below initiatives also support a shift in power. They bring into being organized constituencies and coalitions that can serve as political building blocks for more extensive Green New Deal campaigns. Green New Deal projects also create institutional building blocks, ranging from energy systems to transportation networks, that can become part of the economic and social infrastructure of a national Green New Deal. They help overcome the divisions and contradictions that weaken popular forces by engaging them around projects that embody common interests and a common vision. And they reduce the power of the anti-Green New Deal forces by dividing them, disorienting them, undermining their pillars of support, and even at times converting them.

The fight for the Green New Deal is inevitably entwined with the fight for democracy. Green New Deal from Below initiatives provide models for — and show the benefits of — popular democracy. Green New Deal from Below projects show that through collective action people can make concrete gains that benefit their real lives. They thereby contribute to building a base to protect and extend governance of, by, and for the people at every level. They represent a local embodiment of participatory democracy. And they create bastions for reinforcing representative democracy against fascism in the national arena.

The program of the Green New Deal, beneficial as it may be, is not in itself adequate to solve the deeper structural problems of an unjust and self-destructive world order. One of its strategic objectives, therefore, must be to open the way to wider, more radical forms of change.

By Nicole González, et. al. - Green New Deal Media, May 7, 2024

By Jeremy Brecher - Labor Network for Sustainability, May 6, 2024

By Union Jake, Adam Keller, et. al. - Valley Labor Report, May 3, 2024

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, May 3, 2024

By Jeremy Brecher - Labor Network for Sustainability, April 30, 2024

The Green New Deal from Below represents a unique formation which therefore requires – and has developed — a unique strategy. It is not the same as an electoral campaign, a civil disobedience struggle, a neighborhood organization, a union recognition or contract campaign, an issue campaign, or other familiar forms of social action, though it may have similarities to all of them. It is necessary to recognize this uniqueness to avoid being caught up in familiar but inappropriate tactics.

If power were distributed equally in American society there might well be Green New Deals by now in a majority of American cities and states. But in reality, power is concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority – far smaller even than the notorious “1 percent.” Under normal circumstances the rest of the people have little influence over the basic decisions that determine our lives. The right to vote is precious, but it confers only limited influence over governments and even less over the corporations that shape economic decisions and in practice largely shape the policies of governments.

Yet ultimately the power of the powerful depends on the rest of us accepting and even enabling them. The withdrawal of our acquiescence and cooperation can render them powerless – as the old labor anthem goes, “Without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn.”

The problem of Green New Deal strategy is in essence how to organize and mobilize the potential power of the people. One way is to use the power that we have within existing institutional structures. But in a grossly unequal system, voting and other institutionalized forms of action are likely to have only limited impact. From its start, the Green New Deal has combined action within the political system with direct popular action in the streets – and, uninvited, in the halls of power.

By Jane McAlevey, Amy Goodman, and Juan Gonzales - Democracy Now!, April 23, 2024