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Abstract
Debates on U.S. union decline and revival usually focus on policy, technical, or political fixes. Missing are discussions of bringing workers together to act collectively at work. This has historically been the job of a “militant minority,” workplace activists (often leftists) who brought militancy and dynamism to unions, dedication and personal sacrifice in organizing, who linked workplace and community struggles, who were involved in unions’ day-to-day activities, and who connected rank and filers to leadership. This layer is largely missing today, making labor revitalization difficult. In explaining who the “militant minority” was, how it worked, and why it disappeared, we can find clues for rebuilding it.
Keywords militant minority,
socialism,
communism,
labor movement,
strikes
Introduction
U.S. labor unions have been in decline for decades. As of 2018, union density stands at 10.7 percent overall (
Bureau of Labor Statistics 2018). Union decline has contributed to growing economic inequality and eroded workers’ voice in politics (
Farber et al. 2018;
Rosenfeld 2014;
Western and Rosenfeld 2011). Labor scholars and leaders have long debated how best to reverse labor’s flagging fortunes. Proposed solutions can be grouped into three categories: (1) policy fixes, particularly labor law reform; (2) technical fixes, including sophisticated organizing techniques and comprehensive campaign strategies; and (3) political fixes, including electing sympathetic politicians and winning regulatory reforms like minimum wage hikes.
Each of these approaches has merit, but they are limited by flawed conceptions of how unions build power—conceptions rooted in an elite-led theory of social change from above (
McAlevey 2016), whether by legislators, jurists, policymakers, or union staff and leadership. This ignores the sources from which unions have traditionally drawn power: social mobilization and organizing at the workplace. During key periods of growth—the private-sector upsurge of the 1930s and 1940s and the public-sector upsurge of the 1960s and 1970s—union gains resulted from massive social mobilizations that created crises to which elites had to respond. These movements also revitalized unions themselves, bringing forth new leadership layers and fresh ideas. These movements were based in the workplace, relying on workers’ ability to join together, withhold their labor, and forcibly extract concessions from corporations and governments. Even when conflict did not escalate to strikes, these workers exerted control over their day-to-day lives at work, often forging “cultures of solidarity” that sustained the union as a vital, ongoing presence (
Fantasia 1989;
Keeran 1980).
In each of these periods of explosive growth, unions were aided by mass social movements, which could not be willed into existence. Nonetheless, examining previous upsurges can provide insights for developing a viable strategy for union revitalization today. This is because the upsurges had a structure to them—a structure that was built before the movements exploded. We can analyze that structure, how it was built, and why it disappeared. At its core, that structure was made of a “militant minority,” a small layer of activists in the workplace and recognized as leaders by their coworkers (
Post 2016). Not coincidentally, this militant minority was strongly influenced by left-wing ideologies (
Moody 2017). They were the hardest fighters, the most dedicated organizers, and the ones that most actively built unions’ cultures of solidarity. This group was key not only in leading upsurges but in consolidating their gains.
Today’s labor movement largely lacks this militant minority. We argue that rebuilding it is central to labor revival. In order to understand why, we offer an historic analysis of the militant minority: who was part of it, what it did, why it disappeared, and what might rebuild it.
Reversing Union Decline
Debates on reversing union decline tend to focus around (1) policy fixes, (2) technical fixes, and (3) political fixes. Proponents of policy fixes contend that labor must change the exceptionally antiunion U.S. legal regime (
Forbath and Rogers 2017). Winning labor law reform has been a fervent hope for the labor movement from the mid-twentieth century to the present, as the legal landscape in the United States has long been more hostile than that of any other wealthy country. Most recently, Barack Obama promised to pass the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) during his 2008 presidential run. EFCA would have made forming a union much easier for workers and stiffened penalties for employers who retaliate against workers for union activity. Unions hoped the act would reverse labor’s declining fortunes, but it went down to defeat, and labor’s decline continued apace (
Lichtenstein 2010).
While the legal climate is exceptionally hostile for workers, the problem with policy proposals for union revitalization is that they get cause and effect backwards. Labor made its greatest gains when the legal climate was most restrictive: its greatest upsurges were in the 1930s, before the establishment of the modern collective bargaining regime (
Goldfield 1989;
Rubin, Griffin, and Wallace 1983). Likewise, in the 1960s and 1970s, public-sector workers walked off the job in mass illegal strikes. In both cases, a hostile legal framework did not prevent working-class upsurge; upsurge produced a less hostile legal framework (
Eidlin 2018;
Post 2016).
Arguments for technical fixes spring from the idea that shifts in the American economy and its integration into the global economy require a shift in labor’s organizing strategy. According to this argument, unions’ current organizing models are rooted in an outdated conception of the economy that has been uprooted by globalization, offshoring, the growth of the service economy and corresponding decline of the industrial economy, and the decline of stable employment and the rise of the “gig economy” (
Hyman 2018;
Rolf 2016;
Weil 2017). To revitalize, proponents of technical fixes argue that unions must expand their use of strategic research, develop stronger communications and messaging strategies, and deploy innovative organizing tactics. These fixes are important. Strategic research is central to understanding the complexities of today’s employers and their vulnerabilities. Likewise, strong communications are a basic part of strong unionism. But unions have often deployed strategic research and communications strategies in ways that have pulled union campaigns further from the workplace, as unions have become laser-focused on exploiting potential vulnerabilities through the strategic research “air war” without building the shop-floor organization “ground war” (
McAlevey 2016). Meaningful union revitalization requires a focus on building power on the shop floor, where workers will experience the outcomes of the campaigns unions carry out in their name—and where, ultimately, they hold power (
Moody 2017).
Finally, unions have tried political fixes to spark revitalization, including electoral strategies, lobbying, and regulatory reforms. But this strategy has yielded little (
Davis 1986;
Greenstone 1969;
Heideman 2016). Recently, President Obama passed a number of important reforms resulting from labor’s close ties with him. But, overall, his presidency was a disappointment for unions (
Meyerson 2010). Like policy proposals, relying on political strategies to affect union revitalization mistakes the cause for the effect.
The flaw behind these proposals is their understanding of building worker power. They start from the idea that such power can only be built once workers are given permission from forces from above. Only once elites open the gates for workers to organize—through the right politicians, laws, and/or techniques—can workers build that power. Labor then emphasizes constructing an agenda for those elite forces to fulfill. Rank-and-file workers become passive agents—those who “are organized” rather than organize themselves. The source of labor movement dynamism moves outside its actual members. Thus, the three proposed fixes to labor’s decline are not just offered as an alternative to building militant unions at the rank-and-file level but are in direct conflict with building that kind of unionism, since they operate according to an alternate and even competing logic.
What is needed for labor’s revitalization is not an immediate shift in the legal and economic terrain. Nor is it a savvy new set of tools that can bypass the need to organize workplaces. Rather, the focus needs to be on building a workers’ movement that has the power to create crises and use disruption as a source of dynamism. Creating such a disruptive movement will require viewing the workplace as the site of building power at which workers can create “cultures of solidarity” (
Chibber 2017;
Moody 2018). Seizing opportunities for labor’s revitalization requires building a class-conscious, combative layer of workers in workplaces—a “militant minority.” This layer has been at the heart of past episodes of union growth. Today, it is largely absent. As such, understanding who made up the militant minority, what it did, and why it disappeared can offer clues for a viable strategy for union revitalization today.
Who Was the Militant Minority?
Montgomery (1987, 2) defines the militant minority as that segment of the working class that “endeavored to weld their workmates and neighbors into a self-aware and purposeful working class”—those members of the working class who played key roles in turning their fellow workers from a class
in itself to a class
for itself (
Marx 1973).
Post (2016) calls the militant minority “a layer of workers with a vision and a strategy for how to organize, fight, and win.” The militant minority’s presence and vitality made the key difference in many unions that took up militancy in the Great Depression and New Deal era; their continued presence helped some unions buck the tide of conservatism and bureaucratization that labor experienced during and after World War II (
Horowitz 1997).
Who made up this militant minority? The composition varied depending on location and industry. In meatpacking, for instance, black workers composed an important segment, pushing the United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA) to adopt a broad unionism that included taking on white supremacy. So did a segment of class-conscious white ethnics (
Horowitz 1997). But the groups who historically played the most important role in forming and maintaining strong unions as part of the militant minority were radical leftists: Communists, socialists, Trotskyists, anarchists, and others who held explicit political commitments to militant unionism. While these radicals have played key roles throughout American labor history, they achieved the most in the heyday of the CIO. The United States had seen previous periods of labor upsurge. But the upsurge of the Great Depression/New Deal and World War II eras coincided with an era of strong leftist organization across ideological perspectives in workplaces around the country. The particular strand of radical left organization that proved dominant varied depending on the given union or industry or region (
Dobbs 1973;
Dollinger and Dollinger 2000;
Horowitz 1997), but the Communist Party proved the most influential during industrial unions’ formative years (
Davis 1986), constituting “the main expression of native, working-class radicalism in the United States” (
Laslett 1981, 115).