Public Employee Press

Media Beat: Book Review
What is to be done for the U.S. labor movement?

In their new book “Solidarity Divided,” Bill Fletcher Jr. and Fernando Gapasin offer proposals for revitalizing the U.S. labor movement, which has been in decline for over a generation — through good times and bad, Democratic presidents and Republicans.

Both authors have significant academic and practical experience; Fletcher was a top advisor to John Sweeney in the heady days after the AFL-CIO elected him as its president in 1995 in hopes of reversing the damage.

The authors analyze the organizing and legislative successes and failures of those times, labor’s failure to create a mass movement for social change, and the resulting stagnation, which set the stage for secession of the Change to Win unions. With CTW in disarray, many are looking to recently elected AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka for new vigor.

Fletcher and Gapasin say labor’s decline is rooted in the lack of solidarity that has been at the core of too many unions since the formative days of the movement. The early craft unions fought only for their members, not working people in general, leading them to accept racism and sexism. Significant advances for working-class solidarity came with the rise of industrial unions in the 1930s, which propelled the movement until the anti-labor attacks of the 1970s put unions on the defensive.

The authors call for unions to take a view broader than what’s good for one union or even for unions in general and join with other organizations of working people to build a new movement of the entire working class where union membership and contract bargaining would be only part of the process.

They focus on organizing at the municipal level through grassroots alliances that break down barriers of race and gender as they deal with workplace and community issues, such as the struggles of domestic workers and the Stella D’oro battle (see page 24). And they suggest going beyond these single-issue community-labor alliances to create what they call “working people’s assemblies” to spark a mass movement for change.

“Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path Toward Social Justice” can be purchased online for about $20 or borrowed free from the Education Fund library in Room 211 at DC 37 headquarters.

— Ken Nash