Author Archives: firewithfire6

Don’t Blame Coworkers and Give Them Space to Say No

[This post is part of my series on 1-on-1 conversations.]

There are two standards that I hold myself to that have become absolutely central to everything I do in my union organizing. First, I never blame my coworkers for not being involved or not caring. Second, whenever I invite a coworker to be involved or to share their opinion, I always give them as much space as possible to decline or disagree.

This might seem counterintuitive. If the point of organizing is for more coworkers to be involved, isn’t it their fault if they don’t get involved? Similarly, shouldn’t I be finding more ways to get coworkers to say yes and agree rather than say no and disagree?

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A wide shot of the Niagara Falls horseshoe waterfall. The sun is shining and the water is as blue as the sky.

Anarchist Unionism: A Forgotten but Glorious History

(An abbreviated pamphlet version of this post is available for download and printing here.)

Why should we think about anarchist unionism?

Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the push towards capitalist reforms in China, self-proclaimed Communist movements the world over have lost their main sponsors and sources of political inspiration and legitimacy. Subsequently, since the early 1990s anarchism has seen a resurgence within social movements in the US. Some movements, like the early anti-globalization movement and Occupy Wall Street, have more foregrounded anarchist ideas, while all social movements have been touched by an increased number of anarchists within them, such as the abolitionist wing of the Black Lives Matter movement. 

The labor movement has long been a central part of social movements in the US, sometimes radical and sometimes not, but always touching the lives of millions of people and putting them into varying degrees of action for reform and occasionally towards revolution. While the US labor movement is at a historical nadir in terms of union membership density, the last decade has seen a broad uptick in strike activity and public support.

With this modest resurgence of both anarchism and union organizing, it’s strange that there’s very little overlap between the anarchist movement and the labor movement in the US today. There are very few anarchist-led organizations or prominent anarchists working within the labor movement, and the labor movement has very few prominent leaders or groupings of its own that identify with anarchism. 

From a historical vantage point this is unusual. In the early 20th century anarchism was at times the dominant leftist pole within the international labor movement, with anarchist-led labor federations claiming tens or hundreds of thousands of members and leading large strikes in countries on five continents. However, the repression and precipitous decline of anarchism as an international social movement from the 1930s – 1980s overlapped considerably with the successful assault on the labor movement in the US (and to a lesser degree in other countries) from the late 1940s – 2000s. These movements shriveled up and became increasingly isolated from each other over the second half of the 20th century. 

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A black silouette of a dozen birds sitting on power lines against a dark grey sky.

Baseline Anarchism

I was hanging out in the woods with a few old friends over a long weekend recently and we got to debating about our usual political topics. One friend is a Silicon Valley brand of conservative libertarian, another is a progressive liberal, and I am the resident leftist anarchist. The progressive is more willing to consider other viewpoints and finds some aspects of both the libertarian and the anarchist perspective appealing, whereas the libertarian and myself are much more rigid and uncompromising in our contrasting and long-standing convictions. As such, the libertarian and myself end up trying to win over the progressive on various points. Our hours-long debates are mostly cordial but sometimes get heated. Nonetheless, we all seem to enjoy these skirmishes.

During this sojourn in the woods, I came up with a way of framing anarchist politics that captured better than any other phrasing I’ve come across the distilled essence of my commitment to anarchism. The progressive asked me what about anarchist politics was appealing. In response I posed the following question, “Would you ever want to have less influence over the things in your life that you care about most?” 

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The photo is a close up of a quilt of made up of concentric squares of browns, reds, and yellows. The fabric coloring gives the impression of diagonal bands of dark and light from top left to bottom right.

“Never Give Up the Right to Strike”: An Introduction to No-Strike Clauses

Years ago I came across the quote, the source now forgotten, “My philosophy of unions is simple: never give up the right to strike.” At the time I didn’t fully understand what that meant, but it stuck with me. Over the years of reading labor history and reflecting on my own workplace organizing I’ve gradually realized that that quote encapsulates much of what I now believe about unions.

One of the main ways workers give up the right to strike today is through their union contracts, 98% of which contain “no-strike clauses” forbidding workers from withholding their labor for the duration of the contract. No-strike clauses are usually written in expansive terms. For example, the no-strike clause in the union contract at my job elaborates that any slow down or alteration of or deviation from or interference with the work assignment is prohibited. This amounts to a near-blanket ban on worker direct action against their employer. 

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Critical Book Review: Power, Manipulation, and Burnout in Pitkin’s On the Line

On the Line: Two Women’s Epic Fight to Build a Union (2022) by Daisy Pitkin is probably the most well-written book about the labor movement I’ve ever read. The book is an account of the author’s experience as a union organizer in the mid-2000s written as a long letter to the worker organizer she developed a close bond with, Alma. The characters are relatable, passionate, courageous, and draw you in. The author’s first-person organizing stories are interwoven with important union history to astutely draw out themes of labor struggle as true of capitalism of years past as they are today. An allegory of the moth’s desire to fly towards the light of a fire and to its own certain death illustrates the drive union organizers have to keep fighting bosses despite the self-destructive effects these fights have on their mental and social lives. If you like well-written books, you should read this book on these merits.

If you are looking for any kind of inspiration or positive model for what union organizing can be like, you should read a different book. On most pages Pitkin has a caring voice as a writer and a gentle touch as an organizer, but gentleness by itself is no protection from the machinations of personal and institutional power that subtly slice through the chapters. You almost forget how unseemly an image of union organizing this is because the storytelling is by turns electrifying, stirring, and heart-tugging. I’ll leave it to other reviewers to discuss the book’s positive aspects, and I’ll confine myself to the political message and meaning of the story for workers and organizers today.

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