Unity is Strength

Lacking a class-wide solidarity, labor also becomes easier to divide and conquer. New York Gov. Cuomo’s has an important ally in his battles against public sector unions - private sector unions!

A group of building trade unions contributed $500,000 to back Mr. Cuomo and help finance an offensive against teachers and other municipal workers in the public-sector. Labor officials said the construction union contributions reflected their hope that Mr. Cuomo and the business committee could persuade lawmakers to support publicly financed building projects. The construction unions are closely aligned with the real estate industry, which is a major source of donations for the committee and Mr. Cuomo. As Cuomo and the committee demanded concessions from public sector unions, they have promoted public works proposals that would benefit members of the construction unions, including significant spending on economic development and infrastructure projects. Source

People need to shift the primary focus of their loyalty from their union local to the labor movement as a whole (“One Big Union”), or better yet, to the 99.99% movement as a whole. Turning non-unionized or weakly organised workers against unionized workers with the argument that benefits won through collective bargaining are in some way “unfair”, since non-union workers doing the same work do not receive these benefits must be thoroughly discredited. AFL-CIO sectional unionism reveals the need for something much more like the Industrial Workers of the World. The frustration about the labor movement that many have comes from its importance to worker self-organization, not its irrelevance.