Did anyone else catch the buzz around the speech that AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka made in Chicago about new models for the union movement?
I don't know if it's rhetoric or real... no one does, yet. But the fact that the AFL-CIO seems to be soliciting widely for ideas for new models of worker power...that's very interesting, no?
Here's the link to the speech:
Basically, the ideas is that with union membership at SUCH a low rate - - we saw a 400,000 membership drop last year - - we have got to really think about new ways of affecting change.
Trumka acknowledges that NO amount of union organizing, within or without the NLRB, will get us up to the level of membership that we need in order to leverage power the old way.
So what are new possible models? Maybe the Taxi workers alliance or the Domestic Workers union which organize outside the parameters of a contract with one employer. Maybe a bigger or bolder Working America, the AFL-CIO affiliate for workers who don't have a union at work. Or maybe it's a new form entirely.
At any rate, Trumka says that the AFL-CIO will convene a wide conversation within the labor movement and with community groups in order to get ideas.
But, I'm still a bit skeptical.
I'm a historian, and I spent many days in the AFL-CIO archives. There was another attempt like this in 1983-85 when the labor movement realized that membership was first really sliding. The had a "Committee on the Future" (no joke). While the Committee on the Future considered a wide range of alternative forms of membership and organization, in the end they punted. The leadership couldn't wrap its head around a form that didn't lead directly to a dues-sustaining model. So, instead, they came up with a consumer-focused model that got us the Union Plus credit card, etc. Needless to say, it didn't save the movement.
Nevertheless, the union movement must do something.
The ultimate question will be whether it will be too weighed down by the old forms of unionization that it is carrying on its back (like the single-employer based contract model), or whether it will be able to have the vision and flexibility to create entirely new forms of organizations.
