Post-political labor unions

Stanley Aronowitz is sociology professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, who has written or edited 25 books. His latest, The Death and Life of American Labor: Toward a New Workers’ Movement,  expands on his decades-long argument that unions need bigger goals and more direct action to succeed, or even survive. The following are his comments from an interview.

“...In the 2012 presidential election, unions contributed $141 million to the Democratic Party, one of the two establishment parties. Their main strategy for moving labor forward is electoral politics, yet they have not formed a labor party. Meanwhile, they have virtually given up the strike and any kind of harsh criticism of the capitalist system...Post-political means that the union movement may endorse candidates or run its own, but essentially does not rely on electoral politics and public officials—that is, the state—to fulfill its goals. Instead, unions should rely on their own resources, on their own members and on their own imaginations to create conditions to make their members’ lives better...We’ve been relying for so long on politicians to solve problems that the union membership no longer really relies on its own power. The proper word is really “post-electoral” or “post-state,” and it once had a tremendous resonance among large numbers of workers....Unions have become supplicants of the Democratic Party and depend on the electoral system to resolve workers’ problems.

...agitation for an anti-capitalist politics can’t wait for some kind of apocalypse. With the living standards of the American people stagnating as tremendous riches accumulate at the top, this is the time that anti-capitalist politics can resonate with the larger public....

....The big issue is the long-term contract, because that prevents workers from taking direct action as problems arise in the workplace or the economy changes... by still relying on elections and on contracts and grievance procedures rather than engaging in direct action, unions are on the road to doom....

....I don’t think that union leadership actually reflects the views of the members. Many of these unions have become general workers’ unions. They do not organize in one specific industry. And it’s very difficult for that diverse membership to create an internal democratic opposition that can win. There is no democratic education program to expose them to new ideas and information. So members are voting for leaders to be custodians of an insurance company that provides benefits. But workers don’t really expect them to be seriously involved in their day-to-day struggles, which are often led by the shop steward system—if the shop stewards are still there—and not by the national leaders....

...Two things need to happen, or I don’t see much hope. First, there have to be actions, even if they’re inconclusive, like the fast food and Walmart demonstrations—actions that give people some sense of power and of hope. Second, inside and outside of the unions, people need to be educated about their own history and the degree to which the system is no longer working for them. And they have to begin to think about a different way of life..."

Full interview here