Response to "Unions as Social Capital"

Paul Jarley is undoubtedly right when he asserts that labor unions could greatly increase their value and effectiveness if they paid more attention to "the naturally occurring social networks that tie members together in [and outside their] workplaces." But we thought this is what grassroots organizing of any sort—labor, political or community—always did: look for the natural networks and leaders, and build from there. These naturally occurring social networks are what social scientists now call "social capital," and they are vital, in the words of Robert Putnam, because these long-term, face-to-face relationships (even when some of them are antagonistic) are what "enable participants to act together more effectively to pursue shared objectives" (Putnam 1996). If organizers ignore these networks in selling their issues (whatever they are) to undifferentiated masses of individuals, they are less likely to be effective in the short-term, and they will uniformly fail in the long-term to assist in creating a lasting organization that can act on its own.

However, turning this into a new form of unionism called "social capital unionism" and calling for a fundamental restructuring of the American labor movement around it is too much. Jarley himself seems to recognize that when he calls for a "portfolio" of models against one "single 'model' of unionism" (21). But his portfolio muddies the focus on "Changing to Organize, Organizing for Change" that has been the official program of the American labor movement for nearly a decade. In this regard, we want to make three points against Jarley's argument:

(1) Unions generate social capital whether they intend to or not, but unions have to be consciously focused on building what Dorian Warren calls "political capital," or the ability of people to act together to exercise power in the face of opposition (Warren 2003). The focus needs to be on building rank-and-file committees for everything a union does, not on establishing more bowling leagues or mutual-aid activities.

(2) Jarley's typology of three different forms of Organizing Model unionism confuses more than it clarifies. Unions in various situations are experimenting with ways to organize, and they're using several approaches and methods for different purposes—for better contracts and for politics, for organizing new members or community coalitions. Whether you call it a "model" or a new form of unionism, what's needed is a dramatic shift to "organizing for everything we do."

(3) What's more, we think that's happening—too slowly, way too unevenly, with lots of honest mistakes and unprincipled backsliding. And, the obstacles to organizing (in all its forms) are much more formidable than we anticipated in 1991, when we editors of Labor Research Review called for a decisive turn to the Organizing Model. Still, for all that, the American labor movement is struggling to move up a learning curve to organize at scale. It has a long way to go and a short time to get there, but a lot has been learned in the past decade, and moving up that curve is the only way forward.

Political Capital vs. Social Capital

Jarley's call for a refurbishing of union traditions of direct mutual aid is a refreshing reminder of aspects of unionism that too often get buried in a no-nonsense approach to either servicing or organizing. Staff-dominated organizing campaigns, for example (whether organizing new members, organizing for contracts or for political action), often seem to approach workers on a one-to-one basis to perform one action (sign a petition, make a phone call, attend a rally) to the neglect of longer-term relationship building. But Jarley's notion of "social-capital unionism" as a non-conflictual community of workers would replace one one-sided approach with another. It would replace a too-narrow focus on immediate gains with a too-narrow focus on relationship building.

Jarley shows his own one-sidedness in falsely opposing "issues" and "people" when he says, "unlike the organizing model, the social-capital model of unionism organizes around people, not issues" (20). The Organizing Model (OM), in...