A New Insurgency Can only Arise Outside the Progressive and Labor Establishment

We live in a dangerous time when large corporations and the super-rich are restructuring the nation’s economy. There is a crisis for most Americans, but not for the elites who dominate the political economy of the country. Unfortunately, organized labor can be as much of an obstacle as it is a solution to mounting a movement for social justice that might reverse this trend and offer hope for the future.

Unions have the money, members, and capacity to organize, build, and fuel a movement designed to challenge the power of the corporate elite. But despite the fact that thousands of dedicated members, leaders, and staff have worked their hearts out to rebuild the labor movement, unions are just big enough—and just connected enough to the political and economic power structure—to be constrained from leading the kinds of activities that are needed.

Campaigns challenging corporate power can’t be held in check by institutions with too much to lose. Unions with hundreds of millions in assets and collective bargaining agreements covering millions of workers won’t risk their treasuries and contracts by engaging in large-scale sit-ins, occupations, and other forms of non-violent civil disobedience that must inevitably overcome court injunctions and political pressures.

This isn’t an abstract or theoretical problem; we are already living it every day:

• • In city after city, a project labor agreement—or a collective bargaining agreement covering a small percentage of a corporation’s total workforce—can make a union want to veto any demonstrations and actions that might upset its relationship with a particular employer.

• • A recent demonstration in the Northeast—against corporations that damage the economy by not paying taxes—ended up taking place in an isolated area, where nobody could see it, because a number of unions feared that a more visible site would offend an employer.

• • In Ohio, a set of unions actively worked against a recent multi-state mobilization at a JP Morgan Chase shareholder meeting. The unions said the planned demonstrations seemed “too anti-corporate,” with the potential to turn off independents and buoy conservative fundraising efforts. They feared all of this would undercut the passage of a ballot initiative to regain bargaining rights for public employees.

And what was so anti-corporate? In the case of the Ohio demonstrations it was the demand that JP Morgan and other big banks stop foreclosures, pay their fair share in taxes, and renegotiate toxic loans that are bankrupting cities and states. These issues are critical to building a broader movement that engages tens of millions of people from across the political spectrum. Instead of seeing this as an opportunity to connect efforts to destroy public employee unions with the broader economic problems caused by the Big Banks (and the resulting loss of jobs and revenue in Ohio), the unions unnecessarily chose a narrow path that weakens them in the short and long term.

If our goal is to offend no one, we’re in danger of doing next to nothing. It is understandable that unions don’t want to risk their own relationships with certain employers or politicians. But that shouldn’t restrain a broader effort to hold those corporations and politicians accountable. Unions continue to act as though they represent 30 percent of the private sector workforce and that bargaining for those workers drives wages for the whole economy. Decisions are made based on how to protect the 7 percent of private sector workers who are unionized (instead of the 93 percent of private sector workers who aren’t in unions). The last thirty years prove that this strategy doesn’t make sense for the remaining unionized workers or the overwhelming majority of workers who aren’t in unions.

As the stakes are raised and the intensity of campaigns increases, these problems will be magnified. The solution isn’t to try to defy institutional gravity by convincing people to do something they aren’t willing to do. Instead, we need a different model. We need to develop a movement-based organizational model that...