442 NLRB union representation elections between 1998 and 1999 to find out what if any of these eight comprehensive tactics were utilized. She found that “union win rates increase dramatically as the number of comprehensive organizing tactics increase, ranging from 32 percent for no comprehensive organizing tactics, to 44 percent for one to five tactics, to 68 percent for more than five tactics, and 100 percent for the 1 percent of the campaigns where unions used eight tactics.”1
So we know from such a study what it takes to win. As frustrating as it is that many unions have not taken Bronfenbrenner’s lessons to heart and adopted an organizing model, it’s worth considering the unions that have embraced the organizing model and haven’t set the world on fire.
The Hotel and Restaurant Employees’ union (HERE) went through a process of developing an organizing model in the 1980s and ’90s. Part of this came by learning from frustrating losses like a failed card check at the massive Marriott Marquis hotel in New York. Part of it came by the successful organizing drive for clerical and food service workers at Yale University, which evolved into a dramatic community campaign and which brought fortth many of the union’s leadership. Julius Getman wrote a compelling book on HERE’s evolution into an effective organizing operation titled Restoring the Power of Unions.2 It’s worth reading in light of the question of why unions aren’t growing.
HERE organizing drives have real organizing committees (OC) that move the campaign forward. Organizers target respected workplace leaders to join the OC because campaigns don’t move forward if they can’t convince those leaders to support the union effort. They train their leaders to be bona fide organizers who can hold effective one-on-one conversations, call the question, and challenge a co-worker to rise to action. As they continue to organize new shops in a local, they quickly build up a small army of member volunteer organizers who can talk not just of the union difference but from experience of the organizing process.
Everyday is a button day, and supporters are asked to be public. They march on the boss and escalate from there. They mostly eschew NLRB elections and instead press inside the shop and outside for voluntary recognition while they build toward a strike.
As a small illustration, I spoke with a longtime organizer at an international union about the legal campaign that I think unions should lead to put an end to captive audience meetings (see “Labor’s Bill of Rights” in the Appendix). He was slightly dismissive of the value of that. “We just train the workers to shut those meetings down,” he said. “They come away much more powerful from the experience.”
Which, of course, they do. It’s a great organizing model that empowers workers and doesn’t just seek to increase numbers. And UNITE HERE has grown, somewhat. But that’s what we have to grapple with. The union spends millions on intensive, slow-building campaigns to organize shop-by-shop in a handful of markets. But most hotel workers remain non-union and will continue to remain so absent some profound change.
Let’s take the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), where I was a deputy director of organizing for several years. The AFT’s organizing model is, literally, a book. If you took the AFT’s logo off the cover and replaced it with Labor Notes, it would be right at home at one of their Troublemakers School organizer trainings.
Given that the union’s organizing staff was strongly attuned to numerical analysis, we were unbelievably persnickety about the numbers. You simply had to have at least 10 percent of the bargaining unit on the organizing committee or the campaign would not be permitted to move forward.
Milestones were measurable “go/no-go” points in a campaign’s development. Have you assessed a majority of the workers in the bargaining unit? Good. Are they above 50 percent in support? Okay. Now, have you got a majority of the workers publicly supporting the union effort?
There simply had to be public tests of support. It could be a signed “I’m voting yes” public poster after at least 65 percent of the workers in the unit have signed cards, or it could be a public petition in place of union authorization cards. A campaign director working with a rank-and-file organizing committee had some leeway to decide the actual instrument and order of these tests, but there had to be public tests and they had to clear specific, measurable thresholds.
How was it measurable? Through testing, rank-and-file worker observation, and numerical assessments. Now, organizers can generally have one hell of a bar fight about the relative merits of a 4-point assessment scale, a 5-point one, or an A/B or A, B, C test. We went for the 4-point scale to remove as much potential as possible for organizers—both staff and rank and file—to give into the squishy notion of “fence-sitters,” while still allowing for nuance. Because, as Howard Zinn famously said, “You can’t be neutral on a moving train.”
So, roughly speaking, a worker assessed as a “1” was an activist, a leader, someone who was doing the heavy lifting of making a union happen at her workplace. A “2” was a reliable, tested supporter. A “4” was a “no.” This is not to say that a “4” was a scab, mind you. It’s not what’s in your heart, but where you stood on the last test of support. If you refused to sign a union card today—because you were scared, because you didn’t respect the co-worker making the ask, because you were too distracted to really have much of a conversation about it—you’re a “4.” If you sign tomorrow, you passed the latest test and so you’re now a “2” or maybe a “3.”
And what’s a “3”? Ah, well, this is where we get past the squishiness of “undecided.” A “3” is an unreliable supporter, someone about whom there are conflicting observations or a mixed track record of standing with her co-workers on the most recent test.
Personally, I found this to be very important, particularly when asking rank-and-file activists to soberly assess whether their co-workers are really willing to stand with them or not. People hate to think the worst of their co-workers and will naturally make excuses for someone being evasive or, as the Bubs character on The Wire put it, “equivocating like a motherfucker.” So, if you’re not careful, you can wind up with your organizing committee begging you to move ahead with an election because co-workers who were too scared to sign a public petition or even a private union authorization card were nevertheless promising that they would vote yes for the union when the time came.
They won’t. There’s too much experience and statistical evidence here. If they couldn’t get over the psychological challenge of risking the boss’s ire with a public demonstration of union support, they’re going to chicken out—or worse—when the most crucial test comes along.
Meanwhile, if your rank-and-file activists are trained on a 4-point assessment scale that includes an “unreliable supporter” option, you wind up with funny debriefs:
“She signed the card but it took five minutes to convince her to wear the button. She’s a 4.” “All right. Good observation. But, since today’s test was signing the card and wearing the union button, she has passed the most recent test, so that makes her a 2 tonight. But check back tomorrow and make sure she’s still wearing the button and we can revisit the assessment.”
In the AFT charter school organizing division, which I headed, we imported a number of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees’ tactics that I learned from my time working for its New York local. We also marched on the boss to announce that we had formed a union. This always meant negotiating with the organizing committee about what it would look like for their particular school. Sometimes the committee wanted to politely schedule a meeting with the principal or board chair and have a small elected delegation present their petition and explain why they’d chosen to organize. Other times, the committee wanted all union supporters to corner the principal at the start of the day to do the same. I had no particular religion on the question except that there must be some kind of march on the boss.
We also had all the supporters we could muster write a short testimonial about why they were forming a union. This turned our “beautiful people” lit piece—for most unions, pictures and names of union supporters designed to give them some legal protection and to signal to the boss that the workers are not afraid—into a brochure, if not a book.
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