Can labor organizers transform a moment into a movement?
Can labor organizers transform a moment into a movement?
An organizing conversation often features an âask,â a question encouraging a fellow worker to commit to some form of collective action.
In his address that helped kick off a conference held June 27-29 at Wayne State University in Detroit, educator Sean OâBrien, not to be confused with the Teamstersâ leader of the , told those gathered that the âaskâ was to â,â a call that echoed the title of the conference and simultaneously invoked the collective power workers can only wield if they act in solidarity with each other. In this article, and look at how labor organizers help potential movements gain momentum.
Some 300 people gathered that weekend for the first-ever conference held by the (EWOC), a project started by the (UE) and the (DSA) in 2020 to connect workers with experienced organizers.
Mark Meinster, the UE director of organizing who spoke during a plenary session, referenced the uptick in union organizingâwhich many present in the auditorium had played a role in. Recent years have seen union election wins at a 4,000-person in Chattanooga, Tennessee; an 8,000-person Amazon warehouse ; an Amazon-owned Whole Foods in ; and in stores involving over 10,000 people at 500-plus locations.
Still, overall, union membership numbers remain flat. âWhat would it have taken to turn that moment into real growth for the labor movement?â Meinster asked, rhetorically.
Meinster mentioned EWOC can operate as a âlaboratoryâ and an âexperimental spaceâ wherein working people can come together to figure out how to make the most of the next moment.
âItâs our responsibility,â he told those at the conference, which also seemed to serve as a movement-making lab.
Stories from the Field
Those in attendance, including a number who spoke to NPQ and EHRP, highlighted various ways theyâre taking up the challenge.
OâBrien is the faculty advisor for Callie Moffett and Charlie Rougny, two students who volunteered at the conference via EWOCâs cohost, . But they were also conference participants.
Rougny said she and Moffett attended the volunteer orientation session on how to get plugged into EWOC because they both âfelt impassioned enough after two days toâŠjust press âsendâ and do it.â
Moffett emphasized that for her the conference offered a way to get out of the classroom and interact with experienced organizers.
âYou canât be in the labor movement and just be totally heads down in a book if you want to get into the more organizing and active role,â she said.
Robert Switzer, a butcher who edits , shared how he came to assume a more active role in his union, the . Switzer said that a little more than a year and a half ago he signed up to become a union steward. After indicating interest, months went by, and he heard nothing about the vacant steward position. He joined Detroit DSA last December, got involved in their labor group, and took initiative.
âI started talking to my coworkers,â Switzer said. âI wrote a petition and circulated it to get them to name me a steward.â His efforts bore fruit, and he assumed the steward role. âI have a feeling that if I hadnât done that, that we still wouldnât have a steward, and that our morale would be worse at our workplace. Itâd be less organized.â
As part of his âjourney to stewardship,â he networked with workers from the UFCW reform caucus, . At the conference, he sought to make similar connections while learning about how to build a local EWOC chapter.
Switzer found the workshops at the conference enlightening. âOne thing that I realized,â he said after one session, âis that I put too much burden on myself with the basic things that I think a steward should be doing.â
At work, Switzer is mostly in the meat department, he said. He doesnât interact a lot with those in produce, in the deli, or with cashiers. He knows and trusts at least one person in each department, however. Switzer realized at the conference that he could deputize coworkers as âsub-stewards,â teach them about (namely, the right to have a union representative with you during disciplinary meetings), and share materials. Then these sub-stewards could organize their own departments.
Organizing in Music City
Brenda Waybrant, a Nashville, Tennessee-based bartender and a trainer with EWOC since 2022, facilitated one breakout session.
âMy goal when I facilitate is to help everybody else recognize that they bring skills to it,â she said. âSo, itâs not just about me leading a conversation. Itâs about how do I get other people connected to share their insights so that everybody can learn from that.â
Waybrantâs organizing journey started during the peak of the pandemic when she asked her restaurant manager if employees would be paid if the place shut down, only to be laughed at. With bills to pay, she left that job. While âdoomscrolling on Facebook,â Waybrant found others keen to form a restaurant workersâ union local. They began meeting regularly on Zoom and established to educate and inform employees in the industry about their rights.
Having helped organize library workers in Nashville, she came to understand that âcultivating a leaderful organizationâ where people can step back and have âsomebody elseâŠstep up and take that placeâ is key to successful organizing and building worker power for the long haul.
What she said cuts against the grain of conventional business hierarchies that concentrate decision-making among a select few. A âleaderfulâ organization can serve as an antidote to what Waybrant called the âlearned helplessnessâ produced by similarly patterned top-down, service-oriented union activism.
The âleaderfulâ approach that Waybrant advocates is not a new idea, however. As the late Staughton Lynd , when unemployed laborers marched in 1932 from the Motor City to Ford headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan, officers blocked the road and one asked, âWho are your leaders?â Before authorities opened fire and killed four people, the auto workers responded: âWe are all leaders!â
Organizing in the South
While many participants came from the Midwest or the East or West Coast, the South had considerable representation, Waybrant included. The South has historically had depressed unionization rates. âand evidence of that change was visible at the EWOC conference.
Another Southerner attending the conference was Amanda Cavazos Weems, who cut her organizing teeth as a lifeguard at in Austin, Texas, where she and coworkers joined an (American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees) local and soon after secured a 30% pay raise.
âItâs one thing to read about something,â Weems said, riffing on themes from a workshop geared toward the âlearn it, do it, teach itâ organizing philosophy. âItâs one thing to hear a lecture. Itâs another thing to practice it. Itâs another thing entirely to teach someone how to do the thing that you have just learned and done yourself. And it really does deepen folksâ knowledge of organizing and how it works.â
Another worker from the South, Alex Campbell, said that he had been part of a number of campaigns through . His DSA chapter assisted a campaign waged by Amazon workers at the RUD1 facility in Garner, North Carolina. The RUD1 workers to unionize earlier this year yet continue to organize. Campbell said someone on the Amazon workersâ community committee expressed interest in getting greater support from EWOC.
âWhen I learned there was an upcoming EWOC conference, I jumped at the opportunity to see what was going on here, [to] learn more about EWOC, [and] see what I could learn to help support the Amazon workers,â Campbell shared. He said he got a lot out of a social unionism session, which focused on connecting workplace organizing with broader community issues and integrating those issues into union campaigns. âIt was incredibly, incredibly inspiring.â
A Wobbly from Out West
Another organizer at the conference was Benno Giammarinaro, who is a member of the , affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World IU 670. He and his coworkers recently ended a 40-day strike at the they organized in Berkeley, California.
They felt a âreal affinityâ after meeting with organizers who respected their preference for autonomous decision making and direct action, Giammarinaro said. When the Urban Ore workers launched their underground campaign, they connected with (and became) Wobblies, as IWW members are known, embracing â,â but they also met with folks from the East Bay EWOC chapter, which DSA members had recently formed. The chapter put them in touch with EWOC organizers at the national level.
âI took all of the foundational training series that they ran [and] met a lot of other workers across many workplaces, which was also just very inspiring and motivational, thinking about how connected our struggles are across various industries,â Giammarinaro said.
Preparing for ICE Raids
Even as unions make gains, workers also face new threats. One session, co-led by Sarah Coffey, an organizer with the Wayne Academic Union, specifically addressed the threat of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) workplace raids, which have under President Donald Trump.
In addition to creating sample raid preparedness plans, session attendees received a handout about what employees and the boss can do about an ICE raid before it happens, as it goes down, and after agents leave. During a raid, workers have the right to remain silent. If safe, it can be useful to record video or take notes, which might later serve as evidence.
Coffey offered organizers contemplating acts of civil disobedience additional advice regarding how to best refer to that kind of collective action.
âItâs not that youâre breaking the law,â she explained. âItâs that youâre willing to risk arrest to stand up for your beliefs.â
Building Step by Step
Sometimes, threats compel solidarity. Bethany Beekly, a lecturer at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, said she thought the âgeneral xenophobia and hostility toward our international scholars and workersâ has the potential to unite people on her campusâeven faculty who, she lamented, are often not easily engaged.
Beekly chaired the climate caucus when she was a graduate student worker and later helped organize postdoc workers at Michigan. She said a lot of her organizing work has involved translating issues into concrete tasks and conversations. Beekly has attempted to forge bonds of solidarity with the broader community and bring together different units on her campus too, she said.
âI am really excited about the momentum that I see behind this desire to protect each other,â Beekly said. âI think itâs really encouraging and makes me feel hopeful about our potential to engage in collective action on a large scale to protect our coworkers and our students, our colleagues, and our friends.â
She found the mix of practical training and opportunities at the Detroit conference designed âto stretch our imaginationâ valuable. âWe do have to practice picturing what a better world looks like,â Beekly concluded.
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