Despite years of employer attacks, unions still have vast resources at their disposal. This moment of worker upsurge is the time to use those assets to fund aggressive organizing.
Fighting Times provides a vivid group portrait of the men and women who joined with him in the day-to-day struggles to better their own lives and to better the lives of their family members and communities.
Tim Schermerhorn, a Black socialist and retired New York City transit worker. In these excerpts from a forthcoming memoir, he describes what shaped his activism & lessons for a new generation.
“If we can unionize Amazon…, then workers anywhere can unionize their workplaces. That means you.” - Angelika Maldonado
Rank-and-file unionism, nationally, is taking center stage in many strikes and union actions across the country. “The labor movement was becoming hot, members were really getting activated and needed a way to organize and funnel that energy.”
Recent socialist electoral campaigns have been essential to the rebirth of the US left. Now the Left needs to commit to rebuilding the labor movement from the bottom up.
At Amazon, big organizing campaigns by established unions are only the most visible face of labor organizing. The other is Amazonians United, a militant shop-floor group with a presence around the country.
Veteran labor organizer Fernando Gapasin is interviewed by Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Bill Gallegos. "I dedicated myself to ending racism and building worker power by building democratic working-class organizations from the bottom up."
Too often, leaders magnify the voices of a very small group of members... This reality reflects significant weaknesses in unions and their organizing practices, and illustrates how shallow and limited our understanding of democracy is.
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