Labor and Occupy Wall Street: An Appraisal of the First Six Months

The Occupy movement is a labor movement, in the broadest sense. Inequality and the relationship of wealth to power are among its key concerns. The direct actions and democratic practices of Occupy Wall Street (OWS), and the hundreds of Occupations that have grown in its wake, confront the prerogatives of those who amass wealth, land, and influence. At the heart of the occupations and general assemblies lie questions of democracy and power—concerns that have been central to workers’ struggles for generations.

But in 2012, few would claim that the labor movement is an Occupy movement. Labor’s radical traditions have receded, if not disappeared. On rare occasions we see the boldness, direct action, and vision reminiscent of nineteenth and early-twentieth century workers’ struggles—the occupation of the Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago, the takeover of the Wisconsin State Capitol building in Madison—but such moments are notable as exceptions. Today’s labor movement, by and large, is bureaucratic, risk-averse, and far from militant. Diminished numbers and power have engendered diminished aims that are captured in “safe” messaging, such as “we are only asking for the right to bargain” or “we are just trying to save the middle class.”

Yet while unions have taken a beating, with almost fifteen million members they remain the largest organizations of the working class. Unions have been fighting the 1 percent for more than 150 years and have learned much along the way.

Our purpose here is to lay out the overlapping spheres of these movements, tracing their common concerns, and to make conjectures—wish lists—about how they might most fruitfully work together. Occupy and labor have much to learn from each other’s pasts and present.

Labor and Occupy Wall Street: The First Few Months

While there was no formal union involvement in the planning of the initial Wall Street occupation that started on September 17, 2011, labor and OWS were connected from the beginning. In the spring of 2011, labor and community activists in New York pulled off a vibrant and visible week of protest against Wall Street. This group—the May 12th Coalition—conducted training sessions on civil disobedience and disruptive activity, as well as teach-ins on the contributions made by banks and Wall Street to our current economic woes. Organizers specifically made space for newer and younger activists to assume leadership roles in the “stick and move” protests that took place around the city that week. In June, a number of those activists then launched Bloombergville, an encampment in New York’s City Hall Park, which was in some ways a direct precursor to OWS.

When OWS was launched, many of these activists were involved from the start or came around quickly. In its first days, members of the City University of New York’s Professional Staff Congress (American Federation of Teachers, Local 2234) went to Zuccotti Park in support of OWS and, shortly thereafter, the Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 Executive Board announced its formal support as well.

Within weeks, a number of New York City unions endorsed OWS and gave material support, donating money, food, staff, time, and meeting space. In addition to official endorsements, support came from union rank-and-filers, who joined the protests on their own time, as well as from union staffers. TWU Local 100 filed for an injunction to prevent the city's use of TWU bus drivers to transport arrested protesters to jail, and SEIU 1199 offered the occupiers food and medical training. Nationally, the AFL-CIO and Change to Win unions all spoke out in favor of the movement. When it first looked like Mayor Bloomberg would evict the OWS protesters from Zuccotti Park, labor made a widespread call for its members to come to the park at 6 a.m. to defend them. The two biggest OWS-related protests in New York during the fall of 2011—the one on November 17th turned out more than thirty-five thousand people in Manhattan’s Foley Square—came with labor...